The Trumpian “War on Fraud” Is a Trojan Horse for Austerity
The State Financial Officers Foundation claims to be a nonpartisan, neutral body representing the guardians of state finances. In truth, the corporate donor–dependent nonprofit pushes a right-wing austerity agenda under the guise of fighting fraud.
Conservative power broker Leonard Leo has deep ties to CRC Advisors, a major funder of the ostensibly nonpartisan State Financial Officers Foundation. (Nordin Catic / Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)
As the Trump administration has slashed benefits programs like Medicaid and raided Minneapolis daycare centers in the name of a new, politicized “war on fraud,” the innocuous-sounding State Financial Officers Foundation has been cheering it on.
The organization, composed of state auditors and treasurers, wished the White House “unbridled success in that mission” and…
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