The founder of HashFlare has been charged with conspiracy to commit cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering involving $575 million

According to BlockBeats, on November 22, the two founders of Hashflare, a cryptocurrency cloud mining company, were arrested in Estonia and charged with involvement in cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering amounting to $575 million. HashFlare is a cloud mining company founded in 2015 that claims to allow customers to rent the company's hash values in order to mine cryptocurrencies and receive an equal share of the profits. The entire mining operation, run by founders Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, was part of a "multifaceted scheme" that "defrauded hundreds of thousands of victims" of which, according to a DOJ statement citing court documents, These included convincing victims to sign "fraudulent equipment rental contracts" through HashFlare and convincing other victims to invest in a fake virtual currency bank called Polybius bank. In July 2018, Hashflare announced that it had been forced to terminate all of its Bitcoin mining contracts as the business became unprofitable.