OneCoin Co-founder Greenwood Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering

Karl Sebastian Greenwood, one of the founders of the fraudulent cryptocurrency project OneCoin finally pleaded guilty to federal United States charges including wire fraud and money laundering.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Greenwood confessed that OneCoin which he founded with Ruja Ignatova who is popularly known as ‘Crypto Queen’ was based on a phony digital currency.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said “Karl Sebastian Greenwood operated one of the largest international fraud schemes ever perpetrated, ” adding that “Greenwood and his co-conspirators, including fugitive Ruja Ignatova, conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars, claiming that OneCoin would be the ‘Bitcoin killer.’  In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless.”

After introducing the project eight years ago, both Greenwood and Ignatova purported a fraudulent scheme that looted billions of dollars from investors.

With the pyramid structure which the scheme leveraged to pull in millions of people, it gathered more than $4 billion in revenue. The 45-year-old Greenwood had labeled his unsuspecting victims as idiots at the time.

OneCoin Scams Millions of Investors 

OneCoin which was based in Bulgaria introduced a global multi-level marketing network that attracted unsuspecting investors.

These investors were made to grow the pyramid structure by inviting more investors and then earning commissions in return. Ultimately, this strategy expanded the project faster and at the end of the day, over three million people had invested in the scheme.

Greenwood was arrested in 2018 at his Thailand residence but was later extradited to the United States. Ignatova on the other hand has been on the run and is currently on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Most Wanted list. The FBI has put a bounty of $100,000 on her for anyone who can provide information leading to her arrest. 

As per a published statement, Attorney Williams resounds that this guilty plea by Greenwood “sends a clear message that we are coming after all those who seek to exploit the cryptocurrency ecosystem through fraud, no matter how big or sophisticated you are.”

One Mark Scott was also indicted together with the founders of the fraudulent project. He was believed to be one of the OneCoin scam principal actors.