Co-Founder Of Multi-Billion-Dollar Cryptocurrency Pyramid Scheme "OneCoin" Pleads Guilty

[jgo]

Source: Department of Justice

OneCoin Was a Fraudulent Cryptocurrency Marketed and Sold to Millions of Victims Around the World, Resulting in Billions of Dollars in Losses.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that KARL SEBASTIAN GREENWOOD, who co-founded OneCoin with RUJA IGNATOVA, a/k/a “the Cryptoqueen,” pled guilty today in Manhattan federal court to wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection with his participation in the massive OneCoin fraud scheme. OneCoin, which began operations in 2014 and was based in Sofia, Bulgaria, marketed and sold a fraudulent cryptocurrency by the same name through a global multi-level-marketing (“MLM”) network. As a result of misrepresentations that GREENWOOD, IGNATOVA, and others made about OneCoin, victims invested over four billion dollars worldwide in the fraudulent cryptocurrency. Today, District Judge Edgardo Ramos accepted GREENWOOD’s guilty plea. IGNATOVA, who was added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Top Ten Most Wanted List in June 2022, remains at large.

Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/co-founder-multi-billion-dollar-cryptocurrency-pyramid-scheme-onecoin-pleads-guilty

[Tetrachloride]

1. I'm curious to know when it was known

[FredGarvin]

4. Its known only when people lose money

[Justice matters.]

2. Pay Billions & Dont Even Get One Coin

Creeptocurrency... Ew

[reACTIONary]

3. So THATS why they call it One Coin, LOL!

[William Seger]

5. Why was it any more "fraudulent" than any other cryptocurrency?

Or if it was, why would anyone take a risk selling a fraudulent cryptocurrency when it's so easy for anyone to start a "legitimate" one?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. You get all the money at once with an obviously fraudulent one

The company secretly conducted database entry scam simulating transactions not registered by an actual blockchain, and with no mining behind the apparent cryptocurrency release and circulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneCoin

There's none of the waiting for people to push up the price, or running computers to do the "mining" - it's all cash you can run off with. And "the Cryptoqueen" made it.

[Eugene]

9. There's a difference between greater fool theory and a take-the-money-and-run exit scam.

Mainstream crypto like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.: Ideally, decentralized store of wealth relying on public confidence. There are plausibly legitimate use cases.

Alt coins: Not fraudulent in nature, but there's a risk of pumping and dumping.

Then there are the straight-up rug pulls and Ponzi schemes (BitConnect, FTT).

OneCoin was a pyramid scheme built on a completely imaginary crypto token (no coin, no blockchain, no trading bot). They were taking in valuable funny money and paying out returns in vaporware funny money.

[republianmushroom]

6. more to come I bet.

[RussBLib]

11. Safe bet nt

[keithbvadu2]

7. The big money return in crypto is:::

The big money return in crypto is:::
1. Starting it, hyping it, and getting out, leaving the suckers holding the bag.
2. Handling/storing it for others.
A few have profited by 'investing' but not the majority.


RandySF added::: 3. Attacking any and all crypto skeptics.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

10. more

GREENWOOD and other OneCoin leaders further claimed that OneCoin maintained a private “blockchain,” or a digital ledger identifying OneCoins and recording historical transactions. But OneCoin lacked a true blockchain, that is, a public and verifiable blockchain. Indeed, by approximately March 2015, IGNATOVA and GREENWOOD had started allocating to OneCoin members coins that did not even exist in OneCoin’s purported private blockchain, referring to those coins as “fake coins.”