Yet another cautionary tale of diving into crypto investment opps
Two Estonian men were arrested yesterday for their alleged roles in running a series of cryptocurrency and money laundering scams that bilked $575 million from « hundreds of thousands of victims » while the suspects used their ill-gotten gains to buy real estate and luxury cars.
Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, both 37, were arrested in Tallinn, Estonia following a joint investigation by US and Estonian law enforcement. The men have been charged with 18 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and they each face a maximum of 20 years behind bars.
« The size and scope of the alleged scheme is truly astounding, » US Attorney Nick Brown said in a statement. « These defendants capitalized on both the allure of cryptocurrency, and the mystery surrounding cryptocurrency mining, to commit an enormous Ponzi scheme. »
According to court documents [PDF], the two men attempted to pull off a multi-faceted scheme that began around December 2013 with a fake business called HashCoins.
