{"id":68801,"date":"2022-10-19T12:18:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T09:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=68801"},"modified":"2025-09-07T16:07:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:07:44","slug":"germany-files-charges-against-partners-of-the-onecoin-crypto-pyramid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/germany-files-charges-against-partners-of-the-onecoin-crypto-pyramid\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany files charges against partners of the OneCoin crypto pyramid"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 18 October in Germany, a court hearing involved three partners of the OneCoin cryptocurrency pyramid. The prosecutors charged them with money-laundering, fraud and banking offences, according to Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the defendants is a Munich-based lawyer representing the founder of the scheme, Ruja Ignatova. The publication, not naming her surname, explained that the lawyer on behalf of the client transferred \u20ac20 million ($19.7 million) to buy luxury real estate.<\/p>\n

This is likely Martin Breidenbach. In autumn 2021, during a trial against him, it emerged that in 2016 Ignatova, through an offshore-registered company Aquitaine Group acquired a penthouse in London<\/a> for \u00a313.5m (~$18.21m at the time). In the same building, the founder of OneCoin owned an apartment worth \u00a31.9m.<\/p>\n

At the new hearing, prosecutors also charged a married couple. According to authorities, they processed OneCoin clients’ payments totaling \u20ac320m ($315.4m) over the course of a year.<\/p>\n

In 2014 Ruja Ignatova, together with Sebastian Greenwood, founded the OneCoin financial pyramid. The project was initially pitched as a high-yield cryptocurrency, in which investors earned profits not only from the asset’s growth but also from recruiting new participants.<\/p>\n

In November 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found OneCoin lawyer Mark Scott guilty of laundering nearly $400 million. Ignatova faced charges in the United States in absentia. Her whereabouts have been unknown since 2017.<\/p>\n

In spring 2019, Konstantin Ignatov, the founder’s brother, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. He subsequently pleaded guilty to several counts.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government secured a postponement of Ignatov’s sentencing, saying that cooperation with him was not yet complete.<\/p>\n

In August 2021, Italian authorities charged 14 people<\/a> linked to OneCoin with aggravated fraud. According to law enforcement, through local banks in favor of the pyramid, transactions totaling about \u20ac11m were processed.<\/p>\n

In spring 2022 Europol added Ruja Ignatova to the list of the most-wanted criminals and offered a reward of up to \u20ac5,000 for information about her.<\/p>\n

Later, the founder of OneCoin appeared on a similar FBI list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Follow ForkLog’s Bitcoin news on our Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 18 October in Germany, a court hearing involved three partners of the OneCoin cryptocurrency pyramid. The prosecutors charged them with money-laundering, fraud and banking offences, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,109,1088],"class_list":["post-68801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-germany","tag-onecoin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"30","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68803,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68801\/revisions\/68803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}