A judge granted the feds’ request Friday to drop charges against two defendants in a massive COVID-19 testing fraud scheme handled by the same prosecutor as the tainted “Broadview Six” case.
The dismissal marked the first case to crumble under what another judge called a “credibility crisis” swirling around U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office following the collapse of the Broadview prosecution last month.
On Thursday, the feds moved to drop charges against two “low level of operators” linked to former Loretto Hospital chief financial officer Anosh Ahmed. They did so to avoid a hearing that could have put Boutros on the witness stand to address fresh allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
“We have cases throughout this building that are all in turmoil,” U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said while dismissing the charges Friday. “Pandora’s Box has been opened … I don’t know…
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