On August 13, it was announced that two Estonian nationals, Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, co-founders of the cryptocurrency mining service HashFlare, are set to be sentenced after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. US prosecutors have contested the defense's claims, which argue that victims did not suffer losses, and have recommended a 10-year prison sentence. They assert that the defendants' claims are unfounded, as the expert opinion they cited relies on fabricated data. The co-founders previously stated that they returned $400 million in crypto to users and forfeited assets frozen by the US government in 2022. However, prosecutors labeled HashFlare as a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Potapenko and Turogin were indicted in October 2022, arrested in Estonia, and extradited to the US in May 2024. They have been free on bail since July 2024 and pleaded guilty in February. Read more AI-generated news on: https://app.chaingpt.org/news