A former senior executive at the Atlanta Housing Authority has been sentenced to federal prison after prosecutors said she used her position to steal housing assistance funds, pandemic relief money and commit mortgage fraud.
Tracy Denise Jones, 61, of Atlanta, was sentenced May 20, to nine months in prison, followed by nine months of home detention and 15 months of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $65,598.80 in restitution and a $63,546 fine, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
Jones previously pleaded guilty on Feb. 2 to conspiracy to commit theft of government funds, wire fraud and credit application fraud.
Federal prosecutors said Jones, who served since 2017 as senior vice president over the Housing Choice Voucher Program at the Atlanta Housing Authority, used her role overseeing one of the nation’s largest Section 8 programs…
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