Medicare scam, pandemic benefit theft, offshore tax evasion — federal prosecutors are casting a wide net.
The Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division wrapped up its second consecutive week of sweeping enforcement activity, with prosecutors across the country securing convictions, guilty pleas, and indictments tied to schemes totaling more than $1 billion.
The centerpiece of the week’s actions was a jury verdict in the Southern District of Florida against the founder and owner of HealthSplash, a health care software company whose platform was used to generate fabricated doctors’ orders and prescriptions. The scheme defrauded Medicare and other federal health benefit programs of more than $1 billion through claims for unnecessary medical equipment.
“In the past week, prosecutors throughout the Department secured trial convictions of multiple defendants who ran…
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