Last of six Indian-origin men sentenced for illegally transmitting more than $15 M using Hawala network

Jay Clayton, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Christopher G. Raia, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced on June 5, 2025, that Hirenkumar Patel, the last of six defendants in a case involving an unlicensed money transmitting business that illegally sent millions of dollars in cash throughout the U.S. and between the U.S. and India, was sentenced to 21 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas.  Patel previously pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and one count of operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business on September 12, 2024, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznik.

“The anonymous transmission of money is a linchpin of international criminal activity, whether hacking, drug dealing, sex trafficking, or terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Clayton is quoted saying in a press release.  “Unlicensed money transmission organizations, like the ‘hawala’ network operated by Patel and his cohorts, are tailor made for supporting international criminal activity.  Together with our law enforcement partners, we will seek to shut down these unlicensed networks and stop the flow of dirty money to criminals who do harm to Americans from abroad.”

(A “hawala” is an unregulated method of transferring money—usually internationally—from one person to another without the money being physically transported from one location another. Rather, someone who seeks to have money transferred relies on brokers who use their own capital to disburse money and informal ledgers to track the receipt and disbursal of money.)

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According to allegations contained in the Complaint, the Information, court filings, and public court proceedings:

In or about April 2021, law enforcement identified a vendor (“Vendor”) on the dark web who was offering, in exchange for a fee, a service to convert cryptocurrency into cash.  The Vendor indicated to an undercover agent that some of his clients made money by selling drugs, his wealthiest clients were hackers, and that he had made approximately $30 million over the prior three years through the conversion of cryptocurrency to cash.

In or about February 2023, law enforcement began working with a confidential source and learned that the Vendor was using a “hawala”[1] to obtain the cash that was ultimately exchanged for the cryptocurrency.  As part of this hawala, several of the defendants collected cash along the East Coast of the U.S., which was later delivered to an individual who mailed the cash to the Vendor’s customers.  All six defendants participated in the delivery of, and/or coordinated the delivery of, the collected cash.  The persons who supplied the cash for collection, in turn, used the hawala to have their cash converted into rupees delivered to designated individuals in India.

Of the approximately $15 million sent through the hawala between in or about February 2023 and in or about September 2023, PATEL was responsible for participating in 42 deliveries of bags of cash totaling more than $7.7 million.  Neither PATEL nor his co-defendants were licensed or registered to operate as a money transmitting business in New York or under federal law.

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A chart containing the names of the defendants, the charges they were convicted of, and the sentences they received is set forth below.