OneCoin Scheme's Legal and Compliance Chief Sentenced to Four Years for Money Laundering Role
Summary:
Irina Dilkinska, the former chief of legal and compliance for the OneCoin scam, has been sentenced to four-years imprisonment for her role in laundering millions. Alongside the jail term, she must pay $111 million in restitution. Dilkinska's confession adds her to a list of OneCoin executives punished for their involvement in the $4 billion Ponzi scheme that duped countless investors with a fraudulent cryptocurrency named "OneCoin." Despite being exposed in 2015, the scheme accumulated over $4.3 billion in revenue.
Irina Dilkinska, the prior chief of legal and compliance for the infamous OneCoin scam, has received a four-year prison sentence after confessing her role in laundering multi-million dollars. Aged 42, Dilkinska was handed her sentence by United States District Judge Edgardo Ramos, as reported in a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on April 3. Besides the imprisonment, Dilkinska was also mandated a supervised release for a month and was instructed to forfeit $111 million as a restitution payment. Despite Dilkinska's plea for mercy to be able to cater to her young children in Bulgaria, Judge Ramos refused her on April 3 as reported by Bloomberg. Judge Ramos expressed his disappointment in Dilkinska, describing her as a smart woman who should have been aware of her actions' legal ramifications while partaking in the massive $4 billion Ponzi scheme operation. On November 10, in a Manhattan federal court, Dilkinska admitted to her involvement in both wire fraud and money laundering. Each of these charges held the potential of up to five years in prison, thus a maximum of a 10-year sentence was possible for Dilkinska. The fraudulent OneCoin's former executive is the latest to be incarcerated from the Ponzi scheme. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, OneCoin's co-founder, was given a severe 20-year sentence on fraud and money laundering counts on September 12 of the previous year, accompanied by a restitution order of $300 million. OneCoin, founded by "Cryptoqueen" Ruja Ignatova and Greenwood in 2014, falsely promised investors high returns from a fictitious cryptocurrency named "OneCoin." Investigations later unveiled that the company never developed a operational blockchain and was instead running a pyramid scheme that profited by incentivizing investors to continually recruit new buyers. Ignatova has been missing since October 2017, 15 days after a federal warrant for her arrest was issued following a flight to Greece. Rumors suggest Ignatova may have been murdered following the killing of several OneCoin associates in Mexico in 2020. Despite being unmasked as a scam in 2015, OneCoin still managed to amass over $4.3 billion in revenue, reporting profits of nearly $3 billion between 2014 and 2016.
Published At
4/4/2024 7:01:09 AM
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