MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee woman is accused of defrauding Wisconsin Medicaid to the tune of $2.2 million and using some of that money to buy Kitt’s Frozen Custard, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
Debbie Long, 44, has been charged with theft by fraud, fraud against a financial institution, wire fraud against a financial institution, and two counts of money laundering.
A criminal complaint accuses Long of billing Wisconsin Medicaid for services for her home health care company Pinnacle Home Health Care that never actually happened, including one paid claim for 13,550 hours of care for one person in one day. Long is also alleged to have billed for services that workers said never happened, and billing for travel expenses for non-existent travel.
All told, prosecutors say Long took Wisconsin Medicaid for $2,195,760.87 between March of 2017…
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