FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – A Gary, Minnesota woman is facing three felony charges after prosecutors say she wrote bad checks to a Sacred Heart school fundraiser and a local sports equipment company, using a bank account that had been closed for fraud years earlier.
Kelsey Rae Wastweet, 36, of Gary, was charged June 15 in Polk County District Court with three counts of felony issuance of dishonored checks.
According to a criminal complaint, Wastweet wrote two checks in the summer of 2025 to the RaiseRight gift card fundraiser program at Sacred Heart school in East Grand Forks. The first check, dated July 22, 2025, was for $996. The second, dated July 30, 2025, was for $9,750. Both checks bounced and were returned as “unable to locate account.”
RaiseRight also reported that Wastweet placed two additional online gift card orders through the fundraiser on Aug. 6,…
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