The lawyer who laundered $400 million for the OneCoin cryptocurrency pyramid was denied a new trial, despite the prosecution witness lying. Bloomberg.
In November 2019, Mark Scott was found guilty of conspiring to launder money and bank fraud. The court also agreed with prosecutors that the attorney personally earned $50 million.
The damage from Ruja Ignatova’s OneCoin is estimated at $4 billion. According to Scott, he did not know the project was a scam.
The prosecution’s witness in the trial against him was Ruja’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov. He was arrested in March 2019 at Los Angeles airport. Subsequently he pleaded guilty to several counts. The U.S. government secured a sentencing delay for Ignatov, stating that cooperation with him is not yet complete.
Scott’s lawyer said they intended to appeal.
Ruja Ignatova disappeared in 2017. In spring 2022, Europol added Ruja Ignatova to its list of most-wanted criminals (as of writing, her profile did not appear there). Later she was added to a similar FBI list. According to media reports, Ignatova was killed in November 2018 on a yacht in the Ionian Sea.
In December 2022, co-founder and chief promoter of the pyramid Sebastian Greenwood pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering. In mid-September, Judge Ramos sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment.
Earlier, U.S. prosecutors charged the former head of the legal and compliance department at OneCoin, Irina Dilkinskaya, with charges that carry up to 40 years in prison.