A former rural carrier in Florida was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $650,000 in restitution for falsely claiming workers’ compensation.
The former employee suffered an injury at work in 2000. She filed for benefits with the Labor Department’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Program, or OWCP.
She told health care providers that the pain was so bad that she could hardly move or even shower. She sought treatment for mental health issues as well as the physical injury because of the anxiety and depression she said resulted from the injury curtailing her once active, full life.
In 2014, an agent with the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General, or OIG, sensed something amiss in the data. OIG agents spent a few weeks observing the woman’s activities and found that she went to the gym regularly, planted trees in her yard and moved boxes around the garage….
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