Karl Greenwood, who founded OneCoin alongside Ruja Ignatova, was given a sentence in the United States of 20 years in prison and a $300 million fine for his creation of the massive OneCoin fraud scheme. Ignatova is still on the run.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York gave the sentence to Greenwood, who is a resident of the U.K. and Sweden. Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney, called OneCoin “one of the largest fraud schemes ever perpetrated,” in the statement by the Justice Department.
Around 3.5 million people, who have invested over $4 billion, have been trapped in multiple marketing and fraud schemes., A statement said, “In reality, unlike legitimate cryptocurrencies, OneCoin had no actual value and was conceived of by Greenwood and Ignatova as a fraud from day one.”
In the sales pitches, the OneCoin team compared its product to Bitcoin, but the Justice Department says that the company lacked “a true blockchain, that is, a public and verifiable blockchain,” any operations of mining, and even all the coins it sold on its private blockchain.
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In July 2018, Greenwood was arrested at his residence in Thailand. In October, he pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud. He allegedly earned over $300 million by taking 5% of all OneCoin sales.
Since October 2017, Ignatova has been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted List and has been missing, and several other OneCoin executives have been prosecuted.
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