Barely four months before their criminal conviction for having exploited a Ponzi program of $ 577 million, the two Estonian founders of Hashflare were apparently wrongly ordered to be self -drilling by the US Department of Internal Security (DHS) – an investigation which directly contradicted an order of the court so that the men remain in the state of Washington until they are convicted in August.
In a joint letter to the court last week, the lawyers for Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin told the district judge Robert Lasnik of the western district of Washington that the two men had received “disturbing communications” from DHS ordering them to leave the country immediately.
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” read an email in Potapenko and the dint dated April 11. “The DHS ends your parole. Do not try to stay in the United States – the federal government will immediately find you.
The email, included with the letter posted last week, threatened the two men “criminal prosecution, civil fines and penalties and any other legal option available for the federal government” if they remain in the country. It looks like emails that undocumented immigrants and American citizens have received in recent days.
Ironically, Potapenko and Turrogine are not in the United States on their own will – they were extradited from their native Estonia at the request of the United States Ministry of Justice in 2022 on an 18 -year -old indictment linked to their hashflare program. Although they initially pleaded not guilty to all the accusations, in February, they both pleaded guilty to a conspiracy chief in order to commit fraud by wire, who leads to a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and agreed to lose more than $ 400 million in assets. They are both in the Seattle on Bond region since last July.
“Although there is nothing Ivan and Sergei who would like to go immediately to their homes, they understood that they were also under the order of the court to stay in King County,” wrote Mark Bini, partner of Reed Smith LLP and Potko’s main lawyer, wrote in the joint letter from the couple to the court. Bini did not respond to the request for comments from Coindesk.
In his letter, Bini said that DHS emails had caused both “significant anxiety”.
“We and our customers have all seen recent news. Immigration authorities make mistakes, and individuals who should not be in detention find themselves in detention, sometimes even expelled to places where they should not be expelled, “wrote Bini.
Six days after Bini’s letter to the judge, the DOJ submitted his own letter to the court saying that the prosecutors had coordinated the DHS internal security in-house (HSI) surveys and obtained a one-year trigger for the self-empowerment order.
“This should give the conviction a lot of time,” said the letter of the accusation.
The DHS did not respond to the request for comments from Coindesk.
Potapenko and Turogine should be sentenced on August 14 to Seattle. Their lawyers declared that they would ask to be sentenced to a period, which means no additional prison time, and to be returned to the house in Estonia “immediately”.
