Tim Walz, as governor, and Keith Ellison, as attorney general, took office Jan. 7, 2019. Walz had been a congressional representative from Minnesota’s 1st District, most of southern Minnesota. Ellison abandoned his congressional seat representing the 5th District, most of Minneapolis, to run for attorney general. Ilhan Omar, with Ellison’s robust support, won the congressional seat Ellison’s leaving had made available and was sworn in Jan. 3, 2019.
Minnesota has essentially been financially destroyed ever since.
There were intervening calamities that Walz, Ellison and Omar had nothing to do with, COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd. But both episodes will go down in state history as poorly handled, bungled beyond all understanding, the two shoves on our back that sent us spiraling out of control. Businesses closed. Buildings burned. Law enforcement was held in contempt. Schools…
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