The two founders of the now-defunct Bitcoin cloud miner HashFlare have been arrested in Estonia over their alleged involvement in a $575 million crypto fraud conspiracy.
HashFlare была компанией облачного майнинга, созданной в 2015 году, которая должна была позволить клиентам арендовать хеш-мощности компании для майнинга криптовалют и получения эквивалентной доли ее прибыли.
The company was seen as one of the leading names in the business at the time, but shut down a large portion of its mining operations in Jul. 2018.
Однако, согласно statement from the United States Department of Justice citing court documents, the entire mining operation, run by founders Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, was part of a “multi-faceted scheme” that “defrauded hundreds of thousands of victims.”
This included convincing victims to enter into “fraudulent equipment rental contracts” through HashFlare and persuading other victims to invest in a fake virtual currency bank called Polybius Bank.
The pair is also accused of conspiring to launder their “criminal proceeds” through 75 properties, six luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency wallets, and thousands of cryptocurrency mining machines.
Прокурор США Ник Браун в Западном округе Вашингтона назвал размер и размах предполагаемой схемы «поистине поразительными».
“These defendants capitalized on both the allure of cryptocurrency and the mystery surrounding cryptocurrency mining, to commit an enormous Ponzi scheme,” he said.
The HashFlare founders have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 16 counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering using shell companies and fraudulent invoices and contracts, and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Двое граждан Эстонии арестованы по делу о мошенничестве с криптовалютой и отмывании денег на сумму 575 миллионов долларовhttps://t.co/PLdyf6JSEC
— Уголовный отдел (@DOJCrimDiv) 21 ноября 2022
HashFlares’ parent company HashCoins OU was founded by Potapenko and Turõgin in 2013, while HashFlare launched mining services in 2015. It initially offered contracts for SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and scrypt. ETHASH (ETH), DASH, and ZCASH options followed.
According to the indictment, the pair claimed HashFlare was a “massive cryptomining operation,” however, it’s alleged the company was mining at a rate of less than 1% of what it claimed, and was paying out withdrawals by purchasing Bitcoin (BTC) from third parties, rather than gains from mining operations.
By Jul. 2018, HashFlare announced a halt to BTC mining services, citing difficulty generating revenue amid market fluctuations.
Клиенты were not reimbursed for the remainder of the annual contract fees, which they had paid upfront. Other crypto assets available in the platform’s portfolio continued to operate as normal.
Обвинения of the company being fraudulent were made but never proven in an official capacity.
The last public communication from HashFlare came through in 2019 through an Aug. 9 после where they announced they were suspending the sale of ETH contracts because the “current capacity has been sold out.”
The company promised to resume activities in the “very near future” and teased further announcements, but nothing was ever publically disclosed about what had happened and HashFlare quietly disappeared.
The FBI is now расследование the case and is seeking information from customers who opted into the alleged fraudulent schemes of HashFlare, HashCoins OU and Polybius.
Обвинительный акт по 18 пунктам предполагаемой причастности Потапенкоса и Турыгина был возвращен большим жюри Западного округа Вашингтона 27 октября и распечатан 21 ноября.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/hashflare-founders-arrested-in-astounding-575m-crypto-fraud-scheme