JACKSON, N.J.–The former chairman of Helping Other People Excel (HOPE) Federal Credit Union here has been indicted as part of an alleged bribery scheme that involved a bitcoin exchange owned by an Israeli man who has also been linked to cyber-attacks on JPMorgan Chase & Co., among others.
Trevon Gross, 46, who is also a pastor of Hope Cathedral, was charged with receiving payments to let operators of an illegal bitcoin exchange gain control of the credit union.
The indictment alleges Gross accepted $150,000 in bribes from individuals including Anthony Murgio, who operated an unlicensed bitcoin exchange called Coin.mx, and Yuri Lebedev, who supervised computer programing functions for the exchange.
According to prosecutors, the goal was to operate the credit union as a captive bank and evade potential scrutiny of Coin.mx, which was owned by Gery Shalon, an Israeli accused of orchestrating a massive hacking scheme.
Prosecutors have said Shalon and others ran a criminal enterprise that hacked into a dozen companies' networks, stealing the personal information of more than 100 million people. The JPMorgan breach involved records related to 83 million people.
NCUA liquidated the credit union in 2015.