{"id":277452,"date":"2026-04-20T21:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/277452\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T21:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:38:08","slug":"fresno-man-pleads-guilty-in-45-million-wire-fraud-in-bitwise-case-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/277452\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno man pleads guilty in $45 million wire fraud in Bitwise case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 A Fresno man has <a href=\"https:\/\/kmph.com\/news\/local\/two-charged-in-investor-fraud-scheme-linked-to-bitwise-industries-collapse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">pleaded guilty to his role in two fraud schemes<\/a> that caused about $45 million in losses.<\/p>\n<p>61-year-old David Hardcastle admitted to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<p>In one case, Hardcastle and a partner, Andrew Adler of Connecticut, loaned about $20 million to <a href=\"https:\/\/kmph.com\/news\/local\/two-charged-in-investor-fraud-scheme-linked-to-bitwise-industries-collapse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bitwise Industries<\/a>, then sold those loans to investors using altered documents that understated the true interest rates and included a forged executive signature. <\/p>\n<p>When <a href=\"https:\/\/kmph.com\/news\/local\/founders-of-bitwise-industries-to-plead-guilty-to-wire-fraud-in-federal-court\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bitwise collapsed in 2023<\/a>, investors lost most of their money.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate scheme, Hardcastle used his role at a real estate investment firm to run a Ponzi-style operation\u2014using new investor money to pay returns to others while providing false financial reports and inflating property values.<\/p>\n<p>Hardcastle faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine at sentencing on September 14.<\/p>\n<p>Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n<p>BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT<\/p>\n<p>Adler previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced in June 2025 to just over three years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 A Fresno man has pleaded guilty to his role in two fraud schemes that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-277452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}