OneCoin Crypto Money Laundering Scheme Results in 10-Year Sentence

$400 million dollars (USD) was laundered by OneCoin from 2014-2106. Now, lawyer Mark Scott has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement.

The OneCoin lawyer was found guilty by the U.S. District Court. He is personally accused of laundering $400 million, while the OneCoin pyramid scheme earned nearly $4 billion. Scott has been charged on two accounts (money laundering and bank fraud), but his lawyers claim that he had no knowledge of the illegal activities that the OneCoin company was engaged in.

The crypto coin OneCoin was designed to be much like Bitcoin (BTC), with a similar structure. A MLM network was used by the coin’s founders, Cal Sebastian and Ruja Ignatova to market OneCoin. Ruja is known as the Crypto Queen and has appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. She has disappeared and there are rumors of her death, although the FBI assume she is still alive.

The Truth Comes Out

When the cryptocurrency business was discovered to be a pyramid scheme, the truth about the money laundering started to come out. Investigators say that Scott processed Ignatova’s money in an investment fund and earned millions from that responsibility. Investigators also found that Scott hid his earnings, having bought a sports car and then sold it as well as hiding money in an offshore bank account.

Scott, through his lawyers, says that he only knew the pyramid scheme was a fraud when he read about it online. They maintain his innocence in the entire case.

Scott is not the only OneCoin employee to be taken to court. The legal department head Irina Dilinska has already pleaded guilty to multiple charges- money laundering and bank fraud, like Scoot. She could also face 10 years in prison for her crimes. As part of OneCoin, it was her responsibility to transfer money to secure offshore banking accounts, out of the oversight of local authorities.

The victims of the OneCoin scam will receive some compensation. Karl Sebastian Greenwood was taken into custody in September. He will be serving a 20-year prison sentence and has been ordered to pay out compensation to the victims in the amount of $300 million.

OneCoin never had any monetary value, confirming the worst fears of many investors and government agencies. It is incredible that the scam was allowed to continue for so long, though, before authorities caught on and were able to do something about it. Reports from Justice.gov say that there were 3.5 million victims in this case.