Federal agents found $20 million stashed inside a box spring in a Massachusetts apartment earlier this month.
Yes, they literally found a bed of money.
The US attorney's office released a photo of the money on Monday following the arrest of a Brazilian national charged with conspiring to launder proceeds from a pyramid scheme.
Photo of $20M seized in box spring following arrest of Brazilian national in scheme to launder proceeds of TelexFre… https://t.co/D7WAboPKBk
Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, 28, was charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, the Department of Justice said in a press release.
He was arrested on Jan. 4 after allegedly giving a cooperating witness $2.2 million in a suitcase at a restaurant in Hudson, Massachusetts.
Agents then followed Rocha to an apartment complex in Westborough where they arrested him and seized the massive stockpile of cash hidden in a box spring.
Rocha was allegedly involved in the pyramid scheme by TelexFree, a Massachusetts-based company claiming to provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services. However, authorities alleged that it was actually a $1 billion pyramid scheme operating between January 2012 and March 2014.
TelexFree made 99% of its revenue from "promoters" who were required to buy into the company at a certain price with the promise of being compensated for posting online ads about it, the DOJ said. TelexFree was allegedly only able to pay the returns it had promised to its existing promoters by bringing in money from newly recruited promoters, prosecutors said.
TelexFree's co-founder, Carlos Wanzeler, allegedly fled to his native Brazil in April 2014, where he remains a fugitive. Another co-founder, James Merrill, pleaded guilty to charges of operating TelexFree as a pyramid scheme last October and is awaiting sentencing.