The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota is citing a recent exodus of top prosecutors in that office in a motion to delay the trial of a defendant in the sprawling fraud investigation of Feeding Our Future.
The motion for a continuance, filed Monday afternoon, seeks to push back the trial of Abdirahman Ahmed, who was among several people charged with money laundering in 2022.
A jury convicted one of Ahmed’s business partners, Salim Said, along with Feeding Our Future’s founder, Aimee Bock, last year.
Now the government says it will not be able to “adequately prepare” for Ahmed’s trial in June.
The motion cites another upcoming trial of seven defendants in April as well as “significant staffing changes” at the U.S. Attorney’s Office earlier this year.
Top prosecutor Joe Thompson and several others quit in January. A New York Times report said the attorneys resigned amid pressure to…
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