Date: Feb. 13, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Columbus, OH — Mubarik Ibrahim, of Columbus, Ohio, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $840,000 in restitution for conspiring to launder romance fraud proceeds. Ibrahim pleaded guilty on June 21, 2023. According to court documents from December 2014 through at least April 19, 2022, Ibrahim and his coconspirators laundered proceeds of online romance scams. The perpetrators of the romance scams created several profiles on online dating or social media sites. The perpetrators then contacted men and women throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, with whom they cultivated a sense of affection and, often, romance. The perpetrators would then request money, ordinarily for investment reasons or need-based reasons. The perpetrators provided account information and directed where the money should be sent. In part, these accounts were controlled by Ibrahim. Ibrahim did not commit the romance fraud itself, but instead laundered the fraud proceeds. In furtherance of the scheme, Ibrahim and the coconspirators together funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds from romance scams into bank accounts in his control. Ibrahim conducted financial transactions that included transfers to funds to other accounts by check, cash withdrawals, purchases of official checks, transfers to third parties, transfers by money service business, ATM cash withdrawals in the United States, wires to individuals and companies in the United States—and a spent the fraud proceeds. Ibrahim knew that the funds were proceeds of romance fraud and also knew the transactions were designed, in whole or in part, to conceal the source and to move the funds from the United States to Ghana. In total, accounts in Ibrahim’s control received approximately $839,803.81 in criminally derived funds as part of his criminal activity. He also attempted to launder an additional $339,217.77 into a bank account he controlled which the bank returned to the victim due to a “fraud recall.” Kenneth L. Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio and Karen Wingerd, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, Cincinnati Field Office announced the sentence that was handed down by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson. This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Peter K. Glenn-Applegate and was investigated by special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation (CI). 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.
