HashBX Global Co., Ltd., a Bangkok-based cloud mining platform founded in 2016 by Wanchaleom Langkaweekate, collected funds from Thai retail investors by renting purported Bitcoin hashrate and promising returns of two to thirty percent daily. The platform presented itself as Thailand’s first domestically operated cloud mining service, claiming a two-megawatt facility running Antminer S9 rigs in partnership with Bitmain’s Antpool. Beginning in August 2018, the company progressively restricted investor withdrawals; by March 2019, a documented victim group had filed police complaints claiming losses totaling 52.4 million baht. Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission issued a public warning stating that HashBX had not obtained Ministry of Finance approval to operate a digital asset business and had not filed an initial coin offering application as required by Thai law. Broader estimates of total losses across the investor base reached approximately 38 million US dollars, though no aggregated verified figure from a court proceeding exists. Langkaweekate and associated operators were not arrested as of the date of this filing. The company’s website domain remained accessible but the operation ceased paying investors.
HashBX launched at the end of 2016 when Thailand had no specific digital asset regulatory framework and cloud mining occupied a legal grey zone that Thai authorities were only beginning to define. The platform’s founder openly acknowledged — in an interview with Siam Blockchain at the time of launch — that he had personally lost money to fraudulent cloud mining sites before establishing HashBX, framing his venture as a transparent and verifiable alternative. The 2-megawatt facility claim, the Antpool partnership, and the offer of physical tours to Bangkok investors all served as credibility markers in a market where verifiable operations were rare. Minimum investments began at 380 baht, deliberately set within reach of retail savers.
The collapse followed the pattern common to cloud mining frauds during the 2018 Bitcoin bear market. When Bitcoin prices fell from their late-2017 peak, the revenue from any genuine mining could no longer sustain the promised daily return rates. Withdrawal conditions appeared, then multiplied. An investor who had deposited thirty million baht reported receiving cumulative returns of only thirty thousand to one hundred thousand baht. A lawyer representing seven initial complainants filed formal reports with the Metropolitan Police Bureau in March 2019; a second victim group joined the complaint soon after. The Thai SEC’s public notice — citing the absence of any Ministry of Finance license — formally confirmed the company’s unlicensed status, but no criminal prosecution was confirmed as of the date of this filing.
Laser Online (laser.online) was a high-yield investment program that ran for approximately four months in mid-2017, collecting cryptocurrency deposits from retail investors worldwide by promising 144 percent returns in twelve business days. The platform claimed to generate those returns through a combination of cloud mining infrastructure and cryptocurrency trading. It paid early investors with the funds of later ones, sustained the illusion of profitability during a period of rising Bitcoin prices, and then stopped all payouts in November 2017. By December 2017, the website had removed its YouTube channel, Twitter account, and Facebook presence. The operator identified on the website as CEO — “Antonio Garley” — was subsequently identified by investigators as a pseudonym used by someone believed to be “Bodi Klamph,” a Canadian-based individual, though no arrest or prosecution followed. Verified deposited funds at the scheme’s height reached approximately 63 million US dollars; broader estimates of total losses circulated in investor community reporting range significantly higher, and the $213 million figure cited in some aggregated fraud databases has not been confirmed by any court filing, regulatory finding, or blockchain analytics report. No operator has been charged or arrested as of the date of this filing.
Laser Online launched in the summer of 2017 with a domain registered on October 23, 2016, and a Facebook profile created on July 8, 2017. The timing was deliberate: Bitcoin had risen from under $1,000 in January 2017 to over $4,000 by August, and the pool of retail investors seeking cryptocurrency yield opportunities was expanding rapidly. The platform attracted participants across Asia, with particular concentration in the Philippines and Southeast Asia based on the demographic profile of victim accounts documented by HYIP tracking communities, though it also collected funds globally via cryptocurrency deposit. The platform’s pitch — that a 144% return cycle could be sustained through mining hardware operating at industrial scale — was not examined critically by investors experiencing a market in which cryptocurrency prices themselves were delivering extraordinary returns in the same period.
The collapse was abrupt and total. In September 2017, the platform began experiencing withdrawal processing issues. By November 13, 2017, all payouts had ceased. Within weeks the social media infrastructure was dismantled. No refund mechanism was announced. No court, regulator, or law enforcement agency has since publicly named, charged, or arrested any individual for operating Laser Online.
CryptoMining.Farm, operated through Lifetime Technology Co. Ltd. and linked to Bangkok businessman Pimongkol Tawpibarn, ran a Bitcoin cloud mining service from at least 2014 until mid-2018, when it began systematically blocking customer withdrawals. By February 2019, thirty victims had filed formal complaints with Thailand’s Technology Crime Suppression Division, alleging combined losses of approximately 42 million Thai baht ($1.34 million at prevailing exchange rates). Thai authorities estimated the platform had attracted around 140 investors in total. Tawpibarn was publicly identified in police complaints but no criminal conviction has been confirmed in the available record.
The platform promised a guaranteed annual return of 70 percent — an implausible figure for any real mining operation — across a tiered contract menu that ranged from three-month agreements to open-ended “lifetime” contracts. Investors were explicitly told they could withdraw their principal and returns at any time, without conditions. The no-conditions clause was a core selling point, and its subsequent reversal became the central grievance of every victim who filed a complaint.
From August 2018 onward, Tawpibarn began imposing new withdrawal requirements that had no basis in the original contract terms. In early February 2019, the platform announced it would repay investors in 84 equal instalments over more than seven years, and that repayments would be made in an unnamed foreign currency — a mechanism that would have been illegal under Thai monetary law regardless of whether payments actually materialized. The announcement functioned as a de facto closure, and the site subsequently ceased responsive operation. Complaints were lodged with the Technology Crime Suppression Division on February 17, 2019.
The documented loss figure of $1.34 million reflects only the 30 formal complainants. The wider investor pool, estimated at 140 by Thai police, would imply higher aggregate losses, but no independent audit, court filing, or blockchain analysis report has established a verified total. Claims of losses in the $100 million range, which circulated in victim community forums, are not supported by any primary source identified in this filing. This dossier uses the figure established by formal police records: 42 million baht from 30 documented complainants, with the broader investor impact described as estimated.
VBit Technologies Corp., a South Philadelphia-based company founded in 2018 by Danh C. Vo, raised more than $95.6 million from approximately 6,400 investors across the United States by selling “hosting agreements” that promised customers passive income from Bitcoin mining machines Vo claimed to purchase, house, and operate on their behalf. Between December 2020 and November 2021, Vo transferred approximately $48.5 million of investor funds to personal accounts, distributed millions to family members, and lost an estimated $32 million gambling on other cryptocurrency positions. Vo left the United States in November 2021 after learning of a federal investigation and was believed to be in Vietnam as of the SEC’s December 2025 complaint. He had not retained legal representation as of publication. The SEC filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on December 17, 2025.
VBit sold its hosting agreements as a largely hands-off investment: customers paid upfront for a mining machine that Vo promised to procure, maintain, and connect to favorable low-cost electricity. In practice, VBit operated a fraction of the rigs its contracts implied. In 2020, the company sold agreements covering 3,325 machines while running approximately 920. By 2021, VBit had sold contracts for nearly 8,500 rigs while operating fewer than 1,700. The online investor portal that displayed customer mining earnings and account balances showed figures the SEC alleges were fabricated — hypothetical returns unrelated to any actual Bitcoin production. The Bitcoin that VBit’s machines did mine went exclusively to accounts Vo controlled.
VBit ceased operations in 2022. The investor portal eventually went offline. Customers who had paid sums as high as $100,000 for individual hosting packages had no means of verifying whether their machines had ever been purchased or switched on. No criminal indictment had been returned as of this filing, but the SEC’s civil complaint described a scheme whose factual pattern — inventory fabrication, portal manipulation, self-dealing at scale, and flight — is consistent with the wire fraud and securities fraud charges brought in contemporaneous cloud mining cases.
The case is notable for two regulatory developments that extend beyond the immediate investor harm. The SEC’s complaint explicitly characterizes third-party Bitcoin mining hosting agreements — long treated as service contracts outside the securities framework — as securities offerings subject to registration and anti-fraud provisions. That characterization, if upheld by the Delaware court, would significantly expand the regulatory reach over an industry that has used the service-contract framing as a persistent regulatory shield.
Between April 2018 and at least December 2022, Utah-based Green United LLC and its two principals — founder Wright W. Thurston and lead promoter Kristoffer A. Krohn — raised at least $18 million from retail investors by selling devices they called “Green Boxes” and accompanying software subscriptions called “Green Nodes.” Investors were told the hardware would mine a proprietary cryptocurrency called GREEN on a purpose-built “Green Blockchain,” with GREEN’s value expected to increase as the company developed what it described as a public global decentralized power grid. None of that infrastructure existed. According to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the District of Utah on March 3, 2023, the Green Boxes were commercially available S9 Antminers that Thurston purchased and used to mine Bitcoin for his own benefit; the bitcoin produced was never distributed to investors. The GREEN token itself was not created until several months after sales began, and the returns investors received came from pre-mined token distributions staged by Thurston to simulate active mining.
Green United deployed a multilevel marketing structure in which Krohn and affiliated promoters earned commissions for recruiting new buyers. Investors were promised monthly returns of forty to fifty percent, framed as proceeds from an active mining operation. No secondary market for GREEN tokens existed for more than two years after sales began; when one eventually formed, the token traded at a fraction of its promoted value. Apparent positive performance among early recipients suppressed skepticism and kept new capital entering through 2022.
The SEC filed its civil complaint on March 3, 2023, charging the defendants with selling unregistered securities under Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act and with fraud under Section 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b)/Rule 10b-5. After defendants moved to dismiss, Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen ruled on September 23, 2024 that Green Boxes were sufficiently alleged to be investment contracts under Howey and that the fraud claims would proceed to trial. As of this dossier’s filing date, no trial date has been set and no criminal charges have been filed.
From at least May 2018 through July 2021, Joy I. Kovar and her son Brent C. Kovar operated Profit Connect Wealth Services, Inc., a Las Vegas-based company that raised at least $12 million from more than 277 retail investors — and, by the time criminal charges were filed in February 2025, a documented total of approximately $24 million from at least 400 investors — by falsely claiming that an artificial intelligence supercomputer was generating extraordinary returns through cryptocurrency mining and securities trading. No functional supercomputer existed. No cryptocurrency mining operation backed the promised returns. More than ninety percent of Profit Connect’s revenue came directly from investor deposits, which were used to pay earlier investors, fund Kovar family expenses, and support Brent Kovar’s personal lifestyle — a Ponzi structure running without any productive underlying activity.
Profit Connect marketed its product as an investment in the output of a proprietary AI-powered supercomputer that, the Kovars claimed, could consistently generate fixed annual returns of between fifteen and thirty percent, with monthly compounding and a one-hundred-percent money-back guarantee. These promises were delivered through in-person seminars, online presentations, and direct investor solicitation across a network concentrated in Nevada but reaching investors nationally. Investors who joined early and received distributions could have been paid only with capital collected from later arrivals, not with any trading or mining proceeds.
On July 8, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an emergency action in the US District Court for the District of Nevada and obtained a temporary restraining order and asset freeze against Profit Connect Wealth Services, Joy Kovar, and Brent Kovar. The court granted emergency relief on July 14, 2021, halting all operations. The SEC’s complaint charged the defendants with violating the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act through a fraudulent unregistered securities offering. A federal grand jury subsequently indicted Brent Kovar on February 13, 2025 on twelve counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, and three counts of money laundering, with the scheme’s total documented investor losses recalibrated at approximately $24 million. A jury trial was scheduled to begin April 8, 2025 in the District of Nevada before United States District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey. As of the date of this dossier, Brent Kovar’s criminal case status remains pending.