HOUSTON – A home can represent decades of work. It can provide stability, hold a family’s memories and become something parents and grandparents hope to pass down.
For Keata Wade’s family, that home sits on Teton Street. Her grandmother bought it intending for it to remain in the family. She lived there until she died, and Wade’s father continued living there until his death.
Now, people the family does not know are living inside it.
“I’m here because me and our family had our family home stolen out from under us by someone we have never met,” Wade said.
Wade said her family learned about the alleged fraud after the Harris County Attorney’s Office contacted them earlier this year.
“Earlier this year, we were contacted by an attorney in this office who informed us that they were investigating fraud that included the home of my grandmother who has been deceased for several years,” Wade…
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