The two founders of the now-defunct Bitcoin cloud miner HashFlare have been arrested in Estonia over their alleged involvement in a $575 million crypto fraud conspiracy.
U.S. Attorney Nick Brown for the Western District of Washington called the size and scope of the alleged scheme "truly astounding."
ETHASH (ETH), DASH, and ZCASH options followed.
According to the indictment, the pair claimed HashFlare was a “massive cryptomining operation,” however, it's alleged the company was mining at a rate of less than 1% of what it claimed, and was paying out withdrawals by purchasing Bitcoin (BTC) from third parties, rather than gains from mining operations.
Other crypto assets available in the platform's portfolio continued to operate as normal.
Related: Russian bill would legalize crypto mining, sales under ‘experimental legal regime’ The last public communication from HashFlare came through in 2019 through an Aug. 9 post where they announced they were suspending the sale of ETH contracts because the "current capacity has been sold out."

Source - Cointelegraph