Five arrests made in $267M California hospice fraud case
Five people were arrested by California DOJ in a hospice fraud scheme that defrauded nearly $250 million, AG Rob Bonta announced on April 9.
Five people were arrested by the California Department of Justice in connection with a major health care and hospice fraud scheme in Southern California that defrauded taxpayers of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on April 9. In total, the state filed charges against 21 people.
The investigation, Operation Skip Trace, which the state’s DOJ initiated, uncovered and dismantled a Medi-Cal scheme in which 14 hospice companies purchased personal information of non-California residents on the dark web and enrolled the stolen identities in the state-administered Medicaid program.
How was the California hospice fraud case…
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