Seeking to combat the increasing use of artificial intelligence for fraud and defamation, State Sen. Josh Becker introduced legislation on Feb. 19 that would raise penalties for scams involving deepfake technology and create new avenues for removing the offending images.
The impetus for Becker’s bill is rooted in cases where bad actors have used the technology to commit fraud or harm people’s reputations. In one case, a woman from Southern California lost her home and life savings when scammers used deepfake technology to impersonate the actor Steve Burton. The woman believed she was in a relationship with Burton, and transferred the money to the scammers.
In other cases, AI…
THE HASHFLARE “CLOUD MINING” PONZI SCHEME (GLOBAL/ESTONIA)
Date: February 13, 2025 (Guilty Pleas) Perpetrators: Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin
Case Description: This $577 million cryptocurrency fraud remains one of the largest digital asset scams in history, with major legal developments concluding in 2025. Potapenko and Turogin operated “Hashflare,” which they marketed as a massive cryptocurrency mining operation. Hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide purchased “mining contracts,” believing they were renting hash power to mine Bitcoin. In reality, the duo was running a sophisticated Ponzi scheme.
They created fake customer dashboards that showed “real-time” mining profits, but the money being paid out was simply the capital of newer investors. They laundered the proceeds through shell companies to purchase luxury real estate and a fleet of high-end vehicles. After a massive international investigation involving the FBI and Estonian authorities, the pair agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. This case underscores the “Cyber-enabled Fraud” warning issued by the FATF in early 2026: as technology evolves, the scale of fraud moves from local millions to global billions in the blink of an eye.
Link to Original: ACFE – High Profile Fraud of 2025