FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Two South Florida men were arrested on federal mail fraud and money laundering charges Thursday after postal inspectors said they were part of a multimillion-dollar nationwide fraud scheme involving counterfeit coupons.
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Court documents show the cases against Nikolay Saukov, 60, of Pompano Beach, and Andrei Zaretski, 49, of Hollywood, are being prosecuted in Detroit federal court. Authorities said a third co-defendant, Oleskiy Holikov, lives in and ran a portion of the scheme in the Detroit suburbs.
Coupon ring hits feds’ radar
According to a federal criminal complaint, the three got on authorities’ radar as part of an investigation into The Weekly Coupon Service, or WCS.
Investigators described WCS as “a criminal conspiracy involving the production and sale of highly realistic, but counterfeit, consumer goods coupons with drastically inflated…
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