LEXINGTON, KY – The U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Kentucky reports that two Lexington men, Hussein Qasim, 34, and Ibrahim Qasim, 29, were sentenced on Monday, by U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell, to 57 months and 45 months, respectively, for their roles in a money laundering conspiracy. Hussein and Ibrahim Qasim were also each ordered to pay $3,274,690 in restitution.
According to their plea agreements, the Qasims’ co-conspirators, who lived outside the United States, targeted luxury car dealerships via email and phone calls in which they impersonated real employees of other dealerships. The co-conspirators would deceive the luxury car dealerships into purchasing expensive vehicles that the co-conspirators did not own and would not deliver. At the co-conspirators’ direction, the luxury car dealership victims sent payments to specific bank accounts opened by the Qasims, who then collected the money and transferred it through a sophisticated web of financial transactions, which eventually ended with investments, payments for personal expenditures, and payments to accounts outside the United States, often in crypto-currency, for the benefit of the co-conspirators.
Between June 2022 and December 2023, the Qasims and other co-conspirators were responsible for laundering over $6 million in victim funds, which had been sent from at least seven different luxury car dealerships across the country.
Under federal law, the Qasims must serve 85 percent of their prison sentences. Upon their release from prison, they will both be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for three years.
Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Robert Holman, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Secret Service, jointly announced the sentence.
The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kate Dieruf prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.
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