An Orange County real estate investor charged with criminal fraud will remain in jail pending trial after a judge ruled he was a flight risk and had made death threats against a witness.
Mahender Makhijani, 44, of Corona del Mar, accused of defrauding an Arizona bank of nearly $100 million, was denied bail Monday after a multiday hearing sought by federal prosecutors. He had previously been granted $500,000 bail.
Makhijani, who was taken into custody June 10, has pleaded not guilty to two felonies in a case involving a $100-million loan made by Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bank.
He also has been ordered by an arbitrator to pay $1.34 billion to Laguna Beach real estate mogul Mohammad Honarkar in a separate civil fraud case.
“[T]he Court finds there are no conditions of combination of conditions that will reasonably assure the Defendant’s appearance and the safety of others and the…
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