Date: December 5, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Phoenix, AZ — A federal grand jury in Phoenix returned an indictment against Jeremie Sowerby of Fountain Hills, Arizona, on November 14, 2023, for wire fraud and transactional money laundering. The indictment alleges that Sowerby scammed a victim-investor, an Arizona physician, out of $207,000 under the guise of a purported risk-free investment opportunity called "Justice Capital." Sowerby convinced the victim to invest in what he claimed to be an exclusive hedge fund investment opportunity that supposedly used a "bot" algorithm to invest in a product tied to the stock market. Sowerby claimed that the investment and its guaranteed rates of return could be withdrawn in cash or Bitcoin at any time. Instead, however, Sowerby stole the money and used it for himself, including for an $83,000 cashier's check made out to an entity he owns and controls. Sowerby was previously charged in a separate case, along with co-defendant Luis Ortega, in a 55-count indictment alleging that Sowerby and Ortega scammed hundreds of victims out of millions of dollars in a cryptocurrency investment scheme under the guise of three entities: Now Mining, VIP Mining, and Millennium Technologies. That case remains pending. A conviction for wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, or both. A conviction for transactional money laundering carries a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000, or both. An indictment is simply a method by which a person is charged with criminal activity and raises no inference of guilt. An individual is presumed innocent until evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) and Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted the investigation in this case. Further investigation remains ongoing. The United States Attorney's Office, District of Arizona, Phoenix, is handling the prosecution. CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
