HashFlare
An Estonia-based cloud-mining operation that sold ~$577M in 'mining' contracts (2015–2019) while owning a tiny fraction of the advertised hashpower. Founders Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy in 2025 and agreed to forfeit $400M+.
Also known as: HashFlare, Sergei Potapenko, Ivan Turogin, Ivan Turõgin, Polybius
Summary
HashFlare was a cloud-mining service that sold contracts entitling customers to a share of cryptocurrency it claimed to mine. According to the U.S. DOJ, between 2015 and 2019 its sales exceeded $577 million, but HashFlare possessed only a tiny fraction (well under 1%) of the computing power it claimed, and its dashboard showed customers falsified mining "profits." [1][2]
Outcome
Estonian nationals Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, both 40, were arrested in Tallinn in November 2022 and extradited to the U.S. In February 2025 each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud (max 20 years) and agreed to forfeit assets valued at more than $400 million for victim compensation. Prosecutors said they also raised about $25 million in a related "Polybius" offering. [1][2]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (2)
See also
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — Justin Sun token freezeProjectsWLFI, a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump and his family, blacklisted/froze the wallet of major investor Justin Sun in Sept 2025 — ~540–595M unlocked WLFI tokens (~$107M) plus ~2.4B locked. Sun sued, alleging an undisclosed admin 'blacklist backdoor'; WLFI denied it and threatened a countersuit. The dispute is ongoing.
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
This page was last updated on Jun 15, 2026. View revision history.
