Adam Iza, known in Los Angeles as the “Crypto Godfather,” was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison for orchestrating a violent carjacking and attempted robbery in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2024.
Iza, whose path from teen tech wiz to alleged
criminal mastermind was traced in a 2025 feature in Rolling Stone, admitted he helped finance and organize the attempted robbery of $50 million in Bitcoin; but he disputed his level of involvement in the carjacking when it came time for sentencing.
Prosecutors say Iza directed two crews, one from St. Louis, where he grew up, and the other from Miami, to trail a rival in the underground hacker world and take control of his crypto accounts. When the St. Louis crew, which included Iza’s younger brother, couldn’t locate the target (an 18-year-old enrolled at Rutgers named Veer Chetal), Iza turned up the heat on the men who had flown in from Miami to do the job. “Let’s fucking do this,” he texted over Telegram, according to evidence prosecutors presented in court. “You need to find the room where the computer is. Just knock out the parents. They old as fuck.”
Instead, the Miami crew (all of whom have pleaded guilty) followed Chetal’s parents, who were house-hunting in Danbury in a Lamborghini worth a quarter million dollars, and then rammed into their car from behind while other members of the crew pulled in front of them in a white van. At that point, six men dressed in black and wearing masks emerged from their vehicles, dragged the Chetals from their car and led them to the van, where Chetal’s father was beaten with a metal baseball bat, breaking his arm. Both parents were bound with duct tape and stuffed in the van.
This all occurred in broad daylight, and several witnesses called 911. A police chase ensued, and within a couple hours seven suspects in the robbery were arrested.
“The defendant’s conduct involved extended premeditation and planning, the recruitment of others to do his bidding and take risks, an enthusiasm for extreme violence, and the willingness to impose physical and psychological trauma on vulnerable victims to satisfy his own greed and arrogance,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Further, he has demonstrated contempt for the law and, given his track record, is highly likely to offend again.”
The defense argued that Iza couldn’t be linked to the Telegram account connected to the carjacking and robbery, but prosecutors said there was no evidence to support this assertion and cast it as further proof Iza wasn’t taking full responsibility for his crimes.
“I think the judge, in some ways, held him a little bit more accountable because he didn’t admit to the kidnapping aspect,” Iza’s attorney, Bill Paetzold, told Rolling Stone after the sentencing. “It’s possible the judge could have been maybe a little more sympathetic towards him because his family history is very, very tragic.”
Paetzold urged the judge to take that family history into account, pointing out that Iza, who he compared to Oliver Twist, had grown up in Iraq and Syria during a time of war and upheaval and for a time had subsisted by begging and stealing on the streets. “He fell in with a group of boys like himself, forming a makeshift gang,” Paetzold wrote in a sentencing memo.
After immigrating with his parents to the United States, the family eventually moved to St. Louis, where Iza attended high school. Iza dropped out, and at the age of 16 and moved to California, where he began running with a group of hackers.
“I think the moral of the story is, if you’re in the fast lane, be careful, you might crash,” Paetzold says.
It was in California that Iza eventually began referring to himself as the Godfather, and even had a portrait commissioned of himself as the fictional mafia don. As Rolling Stone detailed last October, Iza built a fortune off crypto while living in California, claiming a net worth of $700 million and moving into a mansion in Bel Air where Prince once lived.
That fortune, prosecutors say, was built on fraud, extortion, intimidation, and violence. In January 2024, Iza agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion, wire fraud, and conspiracy charges that included “abuses of police power.” Prosecutors say Iza had five former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies on his payroll, who, as Rolling Stone previously detailed, provided security, but were also used by Iza to intimidate or shake down associates and rivals, in one case planting drugs on a former associate.
Another alleged target, David Do, said a former LASD deputy harassed and followed him at Iza’s direction, at one point perpetrating an assault in an attempt to steal a laptop Iza believed had $300 million in crypto on it. Do said he recently submitted his victim impact statement to prosecutors in California but wasn’t aware Iza was facing charges in another state.
“It’s a relief,” Do says. “It gives me a small sense of justice.”
Paetzold says Iza plans to appeal his sentence. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in the California case Oct. 5.
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