Onecoin Legal Head Gets Four Years In $4 Billion Crypto Scam

(MENAFN- Live Mint) " (Bloomberg) -- The former head of legal and compliance for the phony Cryptocurrency OneCoin was sentenced to four years in prison after admitting she helped launder hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the scam. Irina Dilkinska, 42, pleaded guilty in November to wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy charges. US District Judge Edgardo Ramos on Wednesday declined her request to avoid prison and return home to Bulgaria to care for her two small children. Calling her“a woman of great intelligence and a woman who ought to have known better,” Ramos also ordered Dilkinska to pay $118.4 million in restitution. She faced as much as 10 years behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines.“She had in her hands precisely what she needed to know about what she had involved herself in,” Ramos said.“I honestly do not understand what prevented her from leaving the scheme before the point when it was brought down.” Dilkinska is the latest person to receive a prison term for her involvement in OneCoin, a $4 billion international Ponzi scheme that never had a functioning cryptocurrency. Instead, it offered commissions to members worldwide for recruiting others to buy worthless OneCoin packages.
Ruja Ignatova, the so-called“Cryptoqueen” who allegedly orchestrated the fraud, disappeared in 2017 as her organization came under suspicion. She was added to the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted fugitives in 2022. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, the co-founder and main promoter of OneCoin, was sentenced in September to 20 years. He's appealing his conviction based on the claim that a government witness against him lied on the stand. Read More: Lawyer Gets 10 Years for Laundering $400 Million From Fraud Prosecutors claimed that, from 2014 through 2019, Dilkinska helped Mark Scott, OneCoin's US-based lawyer, launder $400 million in OneCoin proceeds through a series of phony Cayman Islands investment funds. Scott is a former Locke Lord LLP partner who was convicted in 2019 of money laundering. He was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison. Dilkinska's bid for leniency cited the one year she's already spent in custody at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where she's been confined since being extradited from Bulgaria. Her lawyer, John P. Buza, argued that her career had gone off track and who“fell under the spell” of the con artists behind OneCoin.
The MDC has been repeatedly criticized by judges, lawyers and critics for dirty conditions, frequent lockdowns, poor medical care, a lack of staff and other problems. Dilkinska asked for“special consideration” for the harsh circumstances of her jail time. In a hand-written letter to the judge, Dilkinska called the jail“a crucible of hardship, a place that seems designed to erode human dignity and spirit.”
Ramos agreed that“some measure of leniency” in sentencing was appropriate for Dilkinska's time in the MDC. The case is US v. Dilkinska, 17-cr-00630, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). (Updates with judge's comments.) More stories like this are available on bloomberg ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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