{"id":22462,"date":"2025-02-19T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22462"},"modified":"2025-02-19T10:24:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T10:24:46","slug":"the-cryptocurrency-scam-that-turned-a-small-town-against-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22462","title":{"rendered":"The Cryptocurrency Scam That Turned a Small Town Against Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jim Tucker could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded like fiction, a nightmare too outlandish for an unassuming town like his.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was July 2023, and Tucker was hosting a meeting of the board of Heartland Tri-State Bank, a community-owned business in a small Kansas town called Elkhart. Heartland was a beloved local institution and a source of Tucker family pride: Jim served on the board with his elderly father, Bill, who founded the bank four decades earlier. All the board members \u2014 the Tuckers and several other farmers and businesspeople \u2014 had known one another for years.<\/p>\n

That evening, however, they were gathering to discuss what seemed, on its face, an epic betrayal. Over the past few weeks, the bank\u2019s longtime president, a popular local businessman named Shan Hanes, had ordered a series of unexplained wire transfers that drained tens of millions of dollars from the bank. Hanes converted the funds into cryptocurrencies. Then the money vanished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tucker\u2019s first inkling that something was wrong came from a friend, an investor in the bank who was close to Hanes. A few days before the board meeting, he confided to Tucker that Hanes had messed up: A wire transfer went out, supposedly to help a struggling customer, and now the bank was $30 million in the hole.<\/p>\n

By the time the board members gathered, it was clear that Heartland was caught up in some sort of financial scam, a sophisticated grift that delivered its assets into the clutches of an overseas crypto crime network.<\/p>\n

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Jim Tucker could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded like fiction, a nightmare too outlandish for an unassuming town like his.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryIt was July 2023, and Tucker was hosting a meeting of the board of Heartland Tri-State Bank, a community-owned business in a small Kansas town called Elkhart. Heartland was a beloved local institution and a source of Tucker family pride: Jim served on the board with his elderly father, Bill, who founded the bank four decades earlier. All the board members \u2014 the Tuckers and several other farmers and businesspeople \u2014 had known one another for years.That evening, however, they were gathering to discuss what seemed, on its face, an epic betrayal. Over the past few weeks, the bank\u2019s longtime president, a popular local businessman named Shan Hanes, had ordered a series of unexplained wire transfers that drained tens of millions of dollars from the bank. Hanes converted the funds into cryptocurrencies. Then the money vanished.Tucker\u2019s first inkling that something was wrong came from a friend, an investor in the bank who was close to Hanes. A few days before the board meeting, he confided to Tucker that Hanes had messed up: A wire transfer went out, supposedly to help a struggling customer, and now the bank was $30 million in the hole.By the time the board members gathered, it was clear that Heartland was caught up in some sort of financial scam, a sophisticated grift that delivered its assets into the clutches of an overseas crypto crime network.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22464,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22465,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22462\/revisions\/22465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}