An Arizona businessman who once held a minority stake in the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings is likely to admit next month that he took part in running an illegal shadow bank for cryptocurrency traders, according to a court filing, Bloomberg News reported. A federal judge in New York agreed to hold a hearing Jan. 10 to let Reginald Fowler change his plea — an indication that he probably intends to plead guilty to at least some of the charges he faces. Fowler pleaded not guilty in May to charges he and an Israeli woman, Ravid Yosef, ran an unlicensed money-transmitting operation tied to virtual currency trading. Yosef remains at large. According to prosecutors, Fowler and Yosef lied to banks to open accounts and processed hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of cryptocurrency exchanges. That way they skirted money-laundering safeguards that licensed institutions have to follow, prosecutors said.
