Irvine woman gets 18 months for not reporting $2.6M tied to crypto “Godfather” Adam Iza

An Irvine woman tied to self-styled crypto “Godfather” Adam Iza is headed to federal prison. Iris Rabaya Au, 37, was sentenced Sept. 21 to 18 months for failing to report more than $2.6 million in income to the IRS.

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson also ordered Au to pay $1,484,343 in restitution and forfeit a fleet of luxury and high-performance cars, designer handbags, three “Godfather” sculptures and other assets, according to IRS Criminal Investigation.

What prosecutors say she did

Au pleaded guilty in March 2025 to one count of subscribing to a false tax return. She admitted that more than $2.6 million moved into her personal bank accounts from 2020 through 2023 and that she did not report it, according to IRS Criminal Investigation.

Au dated Iza from 2020 to 2024. At his direction, she created shell corporations and opened bank accounts in their names, according to the IRS release. Prosecutors say she used the illicit money in those accounts to pay about $1 million, mostly in cash, to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies, buy or lease luxury real estate, cars, jewelry and clothing, cover nearly $10 million in recreational spending for Iza and herself and buy about $16 million in cryptocurrency for Iza.

Prosecutors also say Au hid the entities and the income from her own tax preparer and filed returns showing only a small fraction of what she took in. In their sentencing memo, they wrote that she “set up the financial infrastructure that enabled Adam Iza to move, spend, and conceal millions of dollars in fraud proceeds while she personally benefited from the wealth.”

Who is Adam Iza

Iza, 26, called himself “The Godfather” and lived in Beverly Hills and Newport Beach. According to the IRS release, he fraudulently got access to Facebook and Meta advertising accounts and lines of credit and sold that access. He also hired active sheriff’s deputies as private security and had them obtain court-authorized search warrants and confidential law enforcement information targeting people he had financial or personal disputes with.

He pleaded guilty in January 2025 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud and tax evasion and has been in federal custody since September 2024. Decrypt reported Oct. 6 that Anderson sentenced him to 78 months and ordered $23,402,766 in restitution. That term runs concurrently with a 15-year federal sentence he is already serving in a case that included an attempted Bitcoin robbery and an August 2024 kidnapping in Connecticut.

The case has also caught up with the deputies. Five former deputies have been convicted, according to Decrypt. The four whose sentences it reported received terms ranging from one year to 63 months.