53-year-old Patrice Eileen Wilowski-Mevorah of Tampa was sentenced Friday to five years and three months in federal prison for her involvement in a money laundering conspiracy in connection with an international enterprise that was based in Florida and which operated subscription-based sexually exploitative “child modeling” websites.
Wilowski-Mevorah had pleaded guilty on July 6, 2021.
According to court documents, Wilowski-Mevorah laundered at least $2.3 million for the Newstar Enterprise—an internet-based business aimed at for-profit sexual exploitation of vulnerable children under the guise of “child modeling,” through a collection of websites called the Newstar Websites. Wilowski-Mevorah joined the Newstar Enterprise around 2009 and fraudulently opened payment-processing accounts and bank accounts under the pretense of a phony jewelry company.
For 10 years, she routinely used the phony company’s accounts to conceal criminal proceeds from the Newstar Websites and transfer those proceeds back to principal members of the Newstar Enterprise. Wilowski-Mevorah continued to launder money for the enterprise until November 2019, when law enforcement authorities executed several search warrants across the United States and simultaneously seized the Newstar websites’ servers in the United States and Europe. Law enforcement officers then disabled the servers hosting the Newstar Websites.
