US appeals time served sentences for HashFlare Ponzi schemers

American prosecutors appealed towards the time sentences given to the co-founders of Hashflare, a crypto-mining service and $ 577 million Ponzi scheme.

On Tuesday, officers of justice instructed a federal courtroom in Seattle that the federal government appealed to the penalties that have been pronounced earlier this month to Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin.

Potapenko and Turõgin have been in custody of their native Estonia for 16 months after their arrest in October 2022 and have been extradited to the US in Could 2024, the place they’re responsible for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The federal government had argued that the couple needs to be sentenced to 10 years in jail and mentioned that the Hashflare schedule was severely broken victims and was a very powerful fraud that the courtroom had as soon as tried. Potapenko and Turõgin argued for the time served.

On 12 August choose Robert Lasnik van Seattle condemned the couple the pair till the time, a fantastic of $ 25,000 and ordered them to finish 360 ​​hours of neighborhood service in the course of the guided launch, which is predicted to be served in Estonia.

Officers of Justice appealed towards the punishment of the co-founders of Hashflare. Supply: Pacer

Blockchain -crime researchers and corporations have marked an absence of serious penalties and dropping enforcement actions towards dangerous actors as necessary components for crypto crime, as a result of an noticed lack of penalties for felony acts.

Hashflare founders say that victims have been repaid

The prosecutors mentioned that between 2015 and 2019 the turnover of Hashflare was greater than $ 577 million and that the co-founders positioned pretend dashboards that falsely reported the mining capability of the corporate and the returns that traders achieved.

Present members have been paid with funds from newer prospects, the federal government mentioned that “a traditional Ponzi schedule turned out to be.”

Legal professionals for Potapenko and Turõgin argued that, regardless of the exaggeration of the mining capability of Hashflare, Crypto in the end acquired rather more than their preliminary investments, primarily as a result of rise in crypto market costs because the scheme closed.

Additionally they mentioned that victims can be paid in filled with the greater than $ 400 million in belongings as a part of Potapenko and Turõgin’s plea deal in February. Nevertheless, Prosectors claimed that the info had been manufactured and these arguments have been inaccurate.

Sleuths warn lack of penalties for dangerous actors

Blockchain researchers Zachxbt and Taylor Monahan mentioned in June that crypto -right circumstances have been specified by American supervisors and an noticed lack of serious penalties for poor actors that operated on the crypto crime of gas.

Specialists instructed Cointelegraph final month that in some circumstances supervisors have been waved from over -range to underreaction, with early enforcement actions which might be typically arduous. There has now been one other course, the place there’s little accountability.

Associated: Key Participant in $ 13 million crypto Ponzi schedule pleads responsible responsible

Crypto crime losses reached a brand new document within the first half of 2025, with the earlier document beating in 2022 and nearly the identical as the entire losses of total 2024.

Different Ponzi operators are imprisoned

Former rugby participant Shane Donovan Moore was sentenced in July to 2 and a half years behind bars for dishonest greater than 40 traders from $ 900,000 in a crypto mining ponzi schedule.

Within the meantime, Dwayne Golden has been convicted of wire fraud and cash laundering and convicted to eight years in June for his position in a $ 40 million crypto Ponzi schedule that was operated via three digital activa corporations, Empowercoin, Ecoinplus and Jet-CININ.

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