OneCoin’s Legal Chief Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Money Laundering Charges
OneCoin’s head of legal and compliance Irina Dilkinska has pleaded guilty this week to wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection to the crypto scam that deceived and resulted in a $4 billion fraud.
The DOJ said that the US District Judge Edgardo Ramos accepted Dilkinska’s guilty plea.
- According to the official press release, the 42-year old Bulgarian citizen pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit laundering. Each charge carries a maximum potential sentence of five years of imprisonment.
- The scam dates back to 2014, when Ruja Ignatova, known as “the Cryptoqueen,” and Karl Sebastian Greenwood co-founded OneCoin, a Bulgarian-based company that promoted a cryptocurrency bearing the same name.
- However, it turned out to be a fraudulent pyramid scheme operating as a multi-level marketing (MLM) network.
- OneCoin attracted over three million investors, generating $4.3 billion in sales revenue and claiming $2.91 billion in profits between Q4 2014 and Q4 2016.
- Dilkinska, purported Head of Legal and Compliance for OneCoin, instead of ensuring legal compliance, actively participated in its operations and facilitated money laundering, including transferring $110 million in fraudulently obtained proceeds to a Cayman Islands entity.
- Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for his involvement in September.
- Meanwhile, Ignatova faced charges related to OneCoin fraud and money laundering in the Southern District of New York in 2017.
- She disappeared after traveling from Sofia to Athens on October 25, 2017, and was added to the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List in June 2022, with a $100,000 reward for information leading to her arrest.
- Ignatova has not been seen publicly since her disappearance, but it was speculated by certain Bulgarian sources that she may have been brutally killed in 2018 at the directive of a local drug lord.
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