Indictment documents show that Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turygin have defrauded several hundred thousand people, mainly US citizens, since 2015 using complex fraudulent operations.
How did the cryptocurrency scammers fall?
The organizers of the fraudulent schemes, Sergey Potapenko and Ivan Turygin, have planned a multi-level fraudulent scheme, in which lovers of easy cryptographic profits are involved. First, the Estonian cryptocurrency gangsters lured their victims into fraudulent equipment rental contracts with the “HashFlare” cryptocurrency generation service created by the defendants. Namely, the victims were invited to rent their machines to generate cryptocurrency for which a reward was promised.
In addition, Potapenko and Turigins created the “Polybius Bank” virtual currency bank, which did not actually exist, but it is important that the organizers of the plan managed to convince the victims to get their alleged profit made in this bank. It goes without saying that the victims most often did not receive any dividends. If someone also wanted to withdraw money, representatives of Potapenko and Turigin came up with reasons why this could not be done. For example, the account minimum, which allows for the payment of dividends, has been regularly increased. Naturally, this threshold was high enough that only a few could get their money. Potapenko and Turigins, in turn, raised this money at the expense of new clients – a classic Ponzi scheme, when old clients receive dividends at the expense of new clients’ investments.
Over time, the number of dissatisfied customers has grown. “SCAM. You have the illusion of making a profit, nothing more. I invested there a while ago and they kept increasing the minimum amount that can be withdrawn. I was unable to withdraw my money,” described one customer the your experience with HashFlare on a Trustpilot review site. Hundreds of other people have shared the same experience on various sites. This, of course, caught the attention of the FBI and the result of the investigation in cooperation with the Estonian Criminal Police resulted in the arrest of the two Estonian crypto gangsters.
The weakness of the scammers is the luxury lifestyle, cars and real estate
According to various sources of information, Potapenko and Turigin managed to steal between 25 and 74.3 million US dollars by implementing fraudulent schemes. If Potapenko and Turigin showed high sophistication in their schemes, they were much more practical when it came to spending the cheated money. Their weakness is real estate and luxury cars.
Fraudsters bought a plot of property in Pirita (4 apartments, 3 plots of land, 2 houses), Peetris district (3 houses, 1 plot of land) and Kata village near Peipus (4 plots of land, 1 house).
And here are some of the “toys” that Potapenko and Turygin were able to enjoy while still on the “horse”.
Audi A7 Sportback (2018) – $39,500 to $65,000
BMW X7 M50D (2019) – no $137,400 – 173,690
Lexus RX450H – ~$47,920
Mercedes-Benz AMG G 63 (2018) – ~ $160,000
Audi sQ7 (2017) – ~ $84,990.
