Summary
- US prosecutors announced they have sought a 10-year sentence for HashFlare’s co-founders.
- The founders claimed to have returned about $400 million worth of cryptocurrency wrongfully acquired from users, but prosecutors classified this as a multi-level financial scam, namely a Ponzi scheme.
- News of the HashFlare fraud case has raised awareness of legal risks among cryptocurrency investors.
US prosecutors have sought a 10-year prison sentence for the co-founders of the cryptocurrency mining service HashFlare.
According to a Cointelegraph report on the 13th (local time), US prosecutors sought a 10-year prison sentence for HashFlare co-founders Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The defendants claimed in previously submitted court documents that they returned approximately $400 million worth of cryptocurrencies wrongfully acquired from HashFlare users, and relinquished ownership of assets frozen by the US government in 2022. However, prosecutors criticized these claims and labeled HashFlare a Ponzi scheme.
The HashFlare co-founders were arrested and detained in Estonia in May 2024 and were released on bail in July of the same year after extradition to the United States.
YM Lee
20min@bloomingbit.ioCrypto Chatterbox_ tlg@Bloomingbit_YMLEE
