A prominent East Oahu Realtor is going to jail for 20 days for laundering $200,000 that she knew was from illegal gambling.
U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway sentenced Judith Jakobovits, 73, on Monday to two years of probation and included the jail term as a condition of the probation. Mollway also fined Jakobovits $10,000.
Jakobovits pleaded guilty to money laundering in May. She is the last of 28 people to get sentenced for various crimes in connection with an Internet gambling operation.
She admitted that in August 2013, she accepted $210,000 in cash from Allen Yamada, the admitted head bookie of the gambling operation. In return, she gave Yamada two cashier’s checks totaling $200,000 made payable to an escrow company.
Yamada told Jakobovits he wanted her to launder the money so he could apply it toward the purchase of a home. Except by that time, the FBI had already caught Yamada for running the Internet gambling operation, and his purported home purchase was part of a sting.
The FBI set up the sting after Yamada told its agents that he paid $830,000 for his residence and gave Jakobovits $300,000 cash for the down payment.
Another federal judge sentenced Yamada in May to 10 months in prison, fined him $2,000 and ordered him to pay the Internal Revenue Service $45,120 for running an illegal gambling operation, money laundering and lying on his taxes.
In addition to the jail time and $10,000 fine, Jakobovits also faces forfeiting must forfeit to the government the two cashier’s checks.