As part of a plea deal, the pair have agreed to forfeit over US$400 million in assets.

The duo may also face up to 20 years' prison time.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that the defendants, Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, sold contracts to customers entitling them to a share of cryptocurrency mined by their purported mining service, HashFlare.

Between 2015 and 2019, HashFlare's sales totaled more than US$577 million, yet the service did not possess the computing capacity to perform the bulk of the volume of mining it promised customers.

The web-based dashboard which purported to show mining profits instead displayed falsified data, allowing the defendants to siphon funds for personal gain.

Potapenko and Turõgin have agreed to forfeit assets worth more than US$400 million as part of their plea bargain.

These forfeited assets will be used in a remission process to compensate victims of the fraud.

The defendants also each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 8 this year.

The U.S. Justice Department commended the Estonian Police and Border Guard's (PPA) Cybercrime Bureau and the Estonian Prosecutor General, and the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, for their substantial assistance with the investigation and extradition process.

The FBI Seattle Field Office led the investigation, and trial attorneys from the criminal division's money laundering and asset recovery section, along with assistant U.S. Attorneys from the Western District of Washington (state), are prosecuting the case.

Potapenko and Turõgin were extradited from Estonia to the U.S. last May – an activity which involved Estonian authorities literally handing the pair over to U.S. law enforcement at Tallinn Airport.

They had originally been arrested in November 2022.

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