Former LA Sheriff's Deputy Gets 18 Months for Lying to Protect Crypto Fraudster Adam Iza
A federal judge sentenced a former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputy to 18 months in prison on July 13 after he admitted lying to FBI agents investigating the extortion network built by self-styled "Crypto Godfather" Adam Iza.
Scott Allen Simpkins, 34, of Brea, California, was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine alongside his prison term. U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson handed down the sentence after Simpkins pleaded guilty in March 2026 to a single count of obstruction of justice. The conviction makes Simpkins the latest of four LASD personnel to face federal charges tied to Iza's sprawling criminal operation, which blended crypto fraud with physical intimidation and corrupt law enforcement muscle.
What Simpkins Did
Simpkins was present at Iza's Bel Air mansion in August 2021 when, according to federal prosecutors, two deputies held a victim at gunpoint and pressured a $25,000 payment into Iza's account. The victim was a party planner identified in court records as "R.C." Simpkins had been hired and was paid $1,400 for those security shifts. He later received roughly 10 percent of company profits from Iza's ongoing security contract with the deputies' private firm.
When FBI agents and federal prosecutors interviewed Simpkins in November 2024, they warned him explicitly that false statements would constitute a crime. He lied anyway, telling investigators he had seen no ammunition or shell casings in Iza's office and that no financial transactions had taken place in his presence. Prosecutors found his false statements were material to a live federal investigation and directly obstructed the case. According to the IRS Criminal Investigation summary of his guilty plea, Simpkins "knew his lies had the natural and probable effect of interfering with the criminal investigation and legal proceedings."
Who Is Adam Iza?
Adam Iza, who was approximately 25 at the time of his January 2026 guilty plea, also known as Ahmed Faiq, presented himself as a cutting-edge crypto entrepreneur. He operated Zort, a platform marketed as using proprietary artificial intelligence and sentiment analysis to trade cryptocurrency. Federal investigators found that Zort functioned primarily as a vehicle for fraud and money laundering rather than a legitimate trading service. Iza has been in federal custody since September 2024.
His crimes extended well beyond the deputies' extortion ring. Between 2020 and 2022, Iza stole more than $37 million by fraudulently accessing Meta Platforms' business manager accounts and credit lines. In May 2024, Veer Chetal and associates stole approximately 4,100 Bitcoin, worth around $245 million at the time, via social engineering against a teenage Bitcoin holder. Iza learned of that heist and organized a kidnapping attempt targeting the heist victim's parents near Danbury High School in Connecticut. Six people were arrested at the scene in August 2024. Iza pleaded guilty in January 2026 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion. He entered a second guilty plea in June 2026 covering the Connecticut kidnapping conspiracy. His sentencing on those counts has not been scheduled publicly as of this writing.
A Four-Deputy Network
Simpkins received the shortest sentence of the four deputies implicated. Deputy Michael David Coberg received a 63-month sentence after pleading guilty in September 2025 to conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy against rights. Coberg orchestrated the false arrest of "R.C." by arranging drug purchases, using an ex-girlfriend to lure him from Miami to Los Angeles, and directing a fellow deputy to conduct a staged traffic stop in Paramount where cocaine and psilocybin mushrooms were planted in the victim's car. Coberg was also ordered to pay $127,000 in restitution, matching the amount extorted from a separate victim, identified in court records as "L.A.," at gunpoint by Coberg and Iza acting together. Deputies Christopher Michael Cadman and David Anthony Rodriguez have both pleaded guilty to conspiracy against rights and are awaiting sentencing.
Prosecutors described Iza as having "hired off-duty deputies to act as enforcers against people with whom he had personal and business disputes, and used the deputies to extort, intimidate, set people up for arrest and abuse the legal process."
Why This Case Matters Outside the US
The structural failure at the center of this case, concentrated crypto wealth used to purchase systematic law enforcement corruption, is not a uniquely American problem. Chainalysis reported in February 2026 that Chinese organized crime networks routed an estimated $16.1 billion through crypto in 2025, with political collusion documented in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In those countries the consequences were concrete: a deputy finance minister resigned and a mayor was jailed in 2025 and 2026 in connection with crypto-linked corruption. INTERPOL's Operation Serengeti in 2025 dismantled 25 crypto mining centers used for money laundering in Angola and produced 1,209 arrests, with cases spanning multiple continents; suspects in Côte d'Ivoire, for instance, were arrested for crimes that originated in Germany. South Africa, recently removed from the FATF grey list of jurisdictions with weak anti-money-laundering controls, is now tightening oversight of crypto service providers at a moment when the Iza case offers a concrete lesson: effective crypto regulation depends on institutions that are insulated from the wealth they are supposed to police.
South Asia presents its own documented example. In 2025, a former Coinbase customer service agent in India was arrested for accepting approximately $250,000 in bribes linked to a crypto impersonation scam, illustrating that front-line corruption risks tied to crypto wealth extend well beyond the United States.
Legal observers have noted that the 18-month sentence for obstruction alone signals that US federal prosecutors are treating cover-ups as seriously as the underlying crimes. For regulators in South Asia and Africa building crypto oversight frameworks, that posture is worth noting. The $245 million Bitcoin heist that triggered Iza's Connecticut kidnapping plot points to a broader truth: tracing stolen funds on-chain is increasingly feasible, but the harder problem, as this case illustrates, is what happens when the people responsible for acting on that information are already on the payroll of the suspect.