Key Takeaways
- Adam Iza received 78 months in prison and a $23.4 million restitution order.
- Five former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies employed by Iza have been convicted.
- Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms Inc. refunded customers billed for ads they had not ordered in Iza’s fraud scheme.
Adam Iza’s money bought more than bodyguards. The self-styled “Godfather” hired off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who obtained confidential information and search warrants targeting people he was fighting with. According to a statement made by the Department of Justice (DOJ), from the District of California office, the money came in part from a Meta advertising fraud worth roughly $37 million.
On Oct. 5, a Los Angeles judge handed Iza 78 months in prison and ordered him to pay $23,402,766 in restitution. There’s a catch to the prison term. It runs alongside the 15-year federal sentence he received in Connecticut last month for an attempted bitcoin robbery.
Deputies Became Private Muscle
From August 2021 to April 2022, Iza hired Los Angeles-based deputies for personal security. He conspired with them to obtain law enforcement records, personal information, and court-authorized warrants to find and harass people with whom he had disputes. He also enlisted deputies to intimidate and threaten them.
Five former deputies Iza employed have been convicted of federal crimes. One, Michael David Coberg, is serving 63 months for helping Iza extort a rival and arranging a sham drug arrest of another adversary. Another, Eric Chase Saavedra, improperly obtained search warrants while running the company that supplied Iza’s security.
Last month, Iza’s girlfriend, Iris Rabaya Au, was sentenced to 18 months for hiding $2.6 million from the IRS. In Iza’s latest case, the prosecutors put the arrangement plainly in a sentencing memo, people with money “cannot purchase access to confidential databases, investigative tools, warrants, arrests, badges, or firearms for use in private disputes.”
Meta Footed the Bill
From December 2020 to September 2024, Iza fraudulently gained access to Meta business advertising accounts and their credit lines, then sold that access to advertising companies. His companies received approximately $37 million tied to those sales from 2020 through 2022. Meta customers were billed for ads they had not ordered; Facebook’s parent company refunded them and took the loss.
Iza admitted receiving at least $36.4 million in gross income from the scheme between 2020 and 2023. He also admitted to conduct that caused a $13.3 million loss to the IRS. Prosecutors said he concealed his ownership of cryptocurrency trading company Zort and transferred corporate income to cryptocurrency custodians while evading taxes.
One Sentence Runs Alongside Another
Iza pleaded guilty in January 2025 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud and tax evasion. His new 78-month sentence runs concurrently with the 15-year Connecticut term, so the two terms are being served at the same time.
The restitution order remains. So do the convictions of the former deputies. The case’s sharpest contradiction is that an advertising account fraud helped turn public law enforcement powers into tools for a private dispute. Still, this is hardly the first time law enforcement officers have been caught abusing their authority this way.
