The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI, and the US Secret Service announced last week the unsealing of a superseding indictment charging Trevon Gross with accepting more than $150,000 in bribes as the Chairman of the Board of a federal credit union that served primarily low-income local residents in New Jersey.

Gross, 46, was bribed by the operators of Coin.mx, an unlawful Bitcoin exchange operated by co-defendant Anthony Murgio.  Gross is charged with one count of corruptly accepting payments as an officer of a financial institution, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

According to the allegations, Murgio knowingly operated Coin.mx, in violation of federal anti-money laundering laws and regulations, including those requiring money services businesses like Coin.mx to meet registration and reporting requirements set forth by the U.S. Treasury Department. 

Murgio and his co-conspirators went to great lengths to evade detection of their unlawful Bitcoin exchange scheme by operating through a fake company called “Collectables Club,” and maintaining a corresponding fake website.    

Not only did they lie to financial institutions, but Murgio and his co-conspirators also deceived U.S. banks and credit card issuers into authorizing credit and debit card payment and ACH (Automated Clearing House) transactions to purchase Bitcoins through Coin.mx.  They deliberately misidentified and miscoded customers’ credit and debit card transactions and also instructed their Coin.mx customers to lie to banks about the Bitcoin exchange transactions executed through Coin.mx, and to state falsely that they were for the exchange of collectables items, and not for Bitcoins.

In an attempt to evade potential scrutiny from financial institutions and others about the nature of Coin.mx, Murgio, Yuri Lebedev, and their co-conspirators acquired control of HOPE FCU, a federal credit union in New Jersey with primarily low-income members. Gross, who was the Chairman of the Board of HOPE FCU,  allowed and assisted them to take control of HOPE FCU in exchange for bribes. 

“In total, at GROSS’s direction, Murgio and his co-conspirators paid over $150,000 to accounts under GROSS’s control.  GROSS, in turn, spent proceeds from the bribes on personal expenses, including payments on his personal credit cards.  With GROSS’s assistance, Murgio installed his co-conspirators, including Lebedev, on HOPE FCU’s Board of Directors and transferred Coin.mx’s banking operations to HOPE FCU”, the press release said.

A trial is currently scheduled for October 31, 2016.