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Two brothers, Hussein Qasim, 34, and Ibrahim Qasim, 29, were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell to 57 months and 45 months, respectively, for their roles in an international money-laundering conspiracy. 

According to their plea agreements, the Qasims, who lived in Lexington, and their co-conspirators who lived outside the United States, targeted luxury car dealerships via email and phone calls in which they impersonated real employees of other dealerships. 

The co-conspirators would deceive the luxury car dealerships into purchasing expensive vehicles that the co-conspirators did not own and would not deliver.  At the co-conspirators’ direction, the luxury car dealership victims sent payments to specific bank accounts opened by the Qasims, who then collected the money and transferred it through a sophisticated web of financial transactions, which eventually ended with investments, payments for personal expenditures, and payments to accounts outside the United States, often in crypto currency, for the benefit of the co-conspirators.

Between June 2022 and December 2023, the Qasim brothers and other co-conspirators were responsible for laundering over $6 million in the victims’ funds, which had been sent from at least seven different luxury car dealerships across the country.

Under federal law, the Qasims must serve 85 percent of their prison sentences.  Upon their release from prison, they will both be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for three years.  Each of the two brothers have also been ordered to pay $3,274,690 in restitution.