Adam Iza was sentenced to 78 months for the Meta fraud and the scheme that used off-duty sheriff's deputies.

A sentence after a guilty plea is the judgment on the counts he admitted. Judge Percy Anderson imposed 78 months on Monday. The Los Angeles Times reported prosecutors had asked for nearly five years, and that Anderson made this term concurrent with the 15-year Connecticut sentence Iza is already serving. Concurrent terms run together. He does not serve the 78 months on top of the 15 years. The restitution figure is part of Monday's judgment.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, that Adam Iza, 26, also known as "The Godfather," was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison. Judge Percy Anderson also ordered him to pay $23,402,766 in restitution. Iza, who lived in Beverly Hills and Newport Beach, pleaded guilty in January 2025 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion. He has been in federal custody since September 2024. The office said Monday's term runs concurrent with a 15-year sentence he received last month in Connecticut for an attempted Bitcoin robbery. The Los Angeles Times reported that Connecticut case also involved a kidnapping in August 2024, and that the concurrency means he will not serve additional time. Patch reported the same 78-month term and the same restitution figure. A sentence after a guilty plea is the judgment on the admitted counts.

The plea, as the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Los Angeles Times described it, says that from August 2021 to April 2022 Iza hired off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies as personal security and conspired with them to pull confidential law-enforcement information and personal data on people he was in disputes with, and to get court-authorized warrants to track and harass them. The Times reported that, at his direction, two deputies unholstered their guns in August 2021 while he demanded that a person identified in the papers as R.C. transfer $25,000 into a Zort account Iza controlled, and that he admitted setting up R.C.'s arrest on a drug allegation. The next month, the Times reported, a deputy whose company Iza paid about $100,000 a month misled a narcotics detective, and a raid followed at R.C.'s home. In October 2021, the Times reported, deputies restrained a person identified as L.A. inside Iza's home while Iza held him at gunpoint and forced a transfer of $127,000. The plea also describes people identified only as E.Z. and D.D.: a bodyguard brandished a gun, a deputy lied to get a phone-tracking warrant, Iza directed an employee to assault D.D. over a laptop, and three armed people later forced their way into E.Z.'s home and took the device. Those are admissions in the plea. The initials are how the papers identify them.

On the fraud, the U.S. Attorney's Office said that from December 2020 to September 2024 Iza got into Meta business-manager accounts and their credit lines and sold that access to advertising companies. From 2020 through 2022 about $37 million from those sales landed in his companies' accounts. Clients were billed for advertising they did not buy. When the bills were caught, Meta refunded the clients and took the loss. Iza admitted that from 2020 through 2023 he received at least $36,360,844 and caused an IRS loss of $13,286,152, that he did not file corporate returns, and that he hid his ownership of Zort and moved income to cryptocurrency custodians. The office said five former deputies he employed have now been convicted, including Eric Chase Saavedra, sentenced Sept. 28 to 21 months; Michael David Coberg, serving 63 months; Scott Allen Simpkins, sentenced July 13 to 18 months; and David Anthony Rodriguez, sentenced July 20 to one year. The Times reported Anderson also ordered more than $23 million to the IRS, plus $127,000 and $25,000 to two victims, with a December hearing on what is owed to others. Anderson said Iza "cultivated relationships with sworn law enforcement officers and used those relationships to further his personal and financial interests." Iza told the court he understood what he had done and apologized. The Los Angeles Times reported prosecutors had asked for a sentence of nearly five years. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.