Co-Founders of Crypto Mining Service HashFlare Plead Guilty — Market Talk
Two Estonian nationals who founded cryptocurrency mining business HashFlare each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Justice Department said. Federal prosecutors said Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin sold contracts worth more than $577 million to customers for a share of cryptocurrency mined by HashFlare between 2015 and 2019. But prosecutors alleged that HashFlare didn't have the computing capacity required to perform the level of mining claimed by the founders, and that HashFlare operated a "massive, multi-faceted cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme" in which the two defendants used the proceeds to purchase real estate and luxury cars. ([email protected]; @_MengqiSun)