A California jury has awarded nearly $9.4 million to a medical supply distributor after finding that a Wyoming-based logistics broker and its managing member made fraudulent representations that led to a failed $9.5 million shipment of medical gloves.
The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found Oak Sourcing & Logistics LLC and Matthew John Sandvig liable for intentional misrepresentation in a dispute with Ashtel Studios Inc., a California company that imported nitrile examination gloves during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Oct. 9 verdict awarded Ashtel $9.397 million in economic damages, including $6.43 million in out-of-pocket expenditures and nearly $2.97 million in other economic losses.
The dispute centered on Oak Sourcing’s representations about its financial resources, customer contracts and ability to purchase millions of boxes of medical gloves.
According…
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