Yeah.

At the very least we can safely blame him for not doing basic due diligence: even a hypothetically honest “I didn’t know” shows disregard for the victims of his “associate”. It’s already morally awful, even if [AFAIK] it wouldn’t be illegal in USA. [Would it?]

There’s also the possibility he actually knew about it, but didn’t act on it. Morally speaking that would be even worse than the above, and [again, AFAIK] already a crime (omission).