FILE – llustration: Fictitious html pages and hacker programs are seen on screens while a man has his hands on the keyboard. (Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)
A Chinese national has admitted to participating in a fraud and money-laundering scheme that targeted thousands of elderly people across the United States.
Jiandong Chen, who also went by “Little Tiger,” is the second person charged in a five-defendent indictment in which members operated a series of technical support, bank impersonations, government impersonations and refund scams that targeted senior citizens.
How did the scams work?
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Victims would receive unsolicited phone calls, emails, and pop-up ads that directed the victims to call a phone number. Those phone numbers belonged to scam call centers based in India, according to a news release from the United States…
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