TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (CBS12) — The rug may have finally been pulled out from under a Georgia woman accused of helping orchestrate a retail fraud scheme that prosecutors say stole up to $300,000 from TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods stores.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Tuesday that Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, of Decatur, Georgia, entered an open plea of no contest to racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and fraud charges related to an organized retail crime operation.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, Green played a central role in a scheme that defrauded TJX Companies Inc. stores of more than $50,000 in Florida and as much as $300,000 overall through repeated fraudulent refunds.
This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple…
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