The founder of the satanic church, a transgender woman with an ‘anti-police’ stance, was sentenced in US District Court to 18 months in prison for operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
Self-described satanist Aria DiMezzo, 35, was also ordered to pay a fine of $5,000 and to forfeit more than $14,000 along with 1.93 bitcoins.
According to investigators, between June 2020 and January 2021, DiMezzo charged a fee to exchange mostly U.S. dollars for Bitcoin, recruiting customers on websites.
Customers sent DiMezzo money through bank accounts to the Reformed Satanic Church.
DiMezzo sold more than $3 million worth of virtual currency but did not register the operation as a money-transmitting business, failing to comply with mandatory regulations.
According to investigators, DiMezzo failed to file currency transaction reports for exchanges of over $10,000 or suspicious activity reports for transactions over $2,000.
Prosecutors said DiMezzo worked with a man named Ian Freeman to sell virtual currency to customers, paying Freeman a percentage of the profits.
Freeman was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, laundering over $10 million in proceeds of romance scams, and tax evasion.
In 2020, Republicans in one New Hampshire county nominated DiMezzo for sheriff, whose campaign slogan disparaged the police.
At the time, DiMezzo said, as law enforcement, any of his deputies “would be fired on the spot, and perhaps charged with crimes, for any brutality or misconduct.”
DiMezzo serves as the high priest and founder of the Reformed Satanic Church.
The church doesn’t believe Satan exists, DiMezzo claimed, but instead “stands for individualism and voluntarism, and opposes the god of the day,” which he described as the state.
READ: Satanic Temple Demands All Members Are Fully Vaccinated and Masked at SatanCon Event
If you’re unaware that Karl Marx (born Moses Mordecai Levi) and Anton Lavey (founder of the Church of Satan) were both Jewish, allow me to help raise awareness that Communism and Satanism both come from Jews.
LeVey played piano in a Baptist church as a boy so…
Downvote it all you like. You can’t speak against me because you know I’m right.
Why is the article focusing on his mental disorders (like satanism). They have nothing to do with the story.
Some poor person tried to operating a small b******s of doing money changing between dollars and bitcoins. Because he was not born into the ruling class they declared such an act an “illegal bank”, which resulted in them stealing all his money, AND fining him, AND throwing him in jail.
Gross govt abuse and overreach designed to ensure that the power to control currency remains in the hands of the american oligarchs.