Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, both 37, allegedly defrauded hundreds of thousands of victims through a multi-faceted scheme wherein they induced them to enter fraudulent equipment rental contracts with the defendants' cryptocurrency mining service, the department said in a statement. The indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 27 and unsealed on Monday.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington)