Instagram star Jay Mazini, who rose to fame by giving cash to strangers, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for using his online clout to run a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme and Bitcoin scam.
Mazini, real name Jebara Igbara, 28, would have gotten even more time in prison if he hadn’t started singing to state and federal prosecutors, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Frederic Block said Wednesday.
“I take these matters very seriously, because of the profound impact his conduct has had on people who may have lost their life savings,” Block said. “I have to balance the victims here, because it bothers me terribly.”
His victims included small business owners and members of his own Muslim religious community in Brooklyn.
Igbara amassed nearly a million followers by posting videos showing him handing out cash to people shopping at grocery stores, or working at a fast-food restaurant in Queens, or to a woman who lost her purse in an airport.
The videos framed him as a successful businessman and devout Muslim with a generous streak, but he leveraged that public persona to run scams that netted him more than $8 million. Between 2019 to 2021, he took cash from investors in his company, Halal Capital, and used it to pay for luxury vehicles, jewelry and gambling.
He also offered to buy Bitcoin, which surged in value in 2021, for above market value, promising to wire his followers government-backed money in exchange for the cryptocurrency. But he never fully paid those sellers, and sent them fake wire transfers instead, investigators found.
Under the terms of his plea agreement, Igbara could have gotten roughly eight to 10 years in prison.
“Judge Block is an incredibly fair judge who has seen everything, and ultimately decided that Mr. Igbara’s was worth taking a chance on,” he said.
Jebara has already served more than three years of a five-year sentence in New Jersey for kidnapping and trying to silence an online critic. Wednesday’s sentence will run concurrent with his time in New Jersey, meaning that he’ll spend the next three years and eight months in custody, not factoring in good time.
Igbara turned cooperator against his accomplices in the kidnapping scheme, and offered information to the federal government as well, though Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Elbert said his info “didn’t amount to what we would consider substantial assistance.”
