announced<\/a> Monday that over $40 million in forfeited funds has been set aside for investors who suffered net losses from the cryptocurrency scheme between 2014 and 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\nU.S. Attorney for Manhattan Jay Clayton described the initiative as \u201can important step toward returning funds to those harmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Global fraud and fugitive founders<\/h1>\n
Federal prosecutors revealed that the scheme, founded in Bulgaria by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood, defrauded approximately 3.5 million people of more than $4 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While some independent estimates suggest global losses could be as high as $19 billion, the DOJ\u2019s current recovery efforts focus on assets clawed back from the project\u2019s architects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OneCoin was marketed as a \u201cBitcoin killer,\u201d eventually becoming one of the largest digital assets by market cap before collapsing when investors realized the tokens lacked any actual utility or underlying technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween 2014 and 2019, OneCoin\u2019s founders sold a lie disguised as cryptocurrency, costing victims more than $4 billion worldwide,\u201d Clayton said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile no recovery can fully undo the damage, our Office will continue working to seize criminal proceeds and prioritize getting money back into the hands of victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project faced early scrutiny from central banks in Latvia, Sweden, and Norway, which issued public warnings identifying it as a potential Ponzi scheme long before the 2018 raid on its Bulgarian headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Following that investigation, Greenwood was apprehended and subsequently sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in late 2023.<\/p>\n
Ignatova, the self-styled \u201cCryptoqueen,\u201d remains at large after vanishing in October 2017 following a flight to Athens, Greece. She currently occupies a spot on the FBI\u2019s Ten Most Wanted list, with a $5 million reward offered for information that results in her arrest.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victims of the multi-billion-dollar OneCoin fraud can now apply for reimbursement through a federal compensation program funded by seized assets. Summary The Justice Department has opened a reimbursement program using…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25783,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25781\/revisions\/25783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}