Instagram Influencer From Bergen County Nabbed For $8M Fraud: Feds

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — An Instagram influencer based in Edgewater was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for allegedly bilking investors out of at least $8 million, federal prosecutors said.

Jebara Igbara of Bergen County, also known as “Jay Mazini,” was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Frederic Block this week to 84 months in prison for wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering, "arising out of multiple schemes," federal prosecutors said.

Igbara pleaded guilty to the charges in November 2022, prosecutors said.

Until March 2021, according to federal prosecutors, under the name “Jay Mazini,” Igbara would post videos in which he'd supposedly hand out large amounts of cash to various individuals as gifts. He said that he was able to do so because of various cryptocurrency investments, and convinced followers to give him money.

He portrayed himself as a religious follower of the Muslim faith, prosecutors said, and convinced members of his religious community to invest in a company he called Halal Capital LLC.

"Igbara perpetrated an investment fraud scheme via a company called Halal Capital LLC," prosecutors said in a release on Wednesday. "The scheme targeted members of the Muslim-American community in New York by soliciting their money for purported investments in stock, electronics resale and the sale of personal protective equipment. In reality, Igbara was operating a Ponzi scheme, and misappropriated nearly all of the money for his personal expenses, luxury vehicles and gambling."

Manzini ultimately drew nearly a million social media followers from 2019 to 2021, prosecutors said.

“Igbara was a crypto con man," said IRS Special Agent In Charge Thomas M. Fattorusso. "He not only created a fake online presence to purport that he was a wealthy crypto investor, he used his Instagram persona as proof of success when convincing his unsuspecting victims to invest in his schemes. He conned a New York Muslim community out of millions then simply spent it and gambled it away. Igbara had no regard for the victims."

As part of his sentence, Igbara was ordered to pay $10 million in forfeiture.

Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said, “The prosecution of Igbara unmasked him as a fraudster who used his social media popularity to con investors out of millions of dollars. Shamefully, he targeted his own religious community, taking advantage of their trust in him so he could spend and gamble their hard-earned money. Hopefully today’s sentence will influence fraudsters, like this defendant, to think twice."