Konstantin testifies for DOJ, turns on OneCoin and sister
Konstantin Ignatov has appeared as a witness for the DOJ.
Examination by prosecutors spanned questions about his involvement in OneCoin, working under his sister, Ruja Ignatova, and Mark Scott’s visit to the Sofia head office.
Konstantin (right) appeared for the DOJ as a cooperating witness in prison blues.
Ignatov is currently being held at the Metropolitan Correction Center, pending his own criminal trial.
Our source for information inside Mark Scott’s trial is Matthew Russel Lee, reporting for the Inner City Press.
According to Lee’s report Konstantin
described OneCoin as a multi level marketing operation and identified the Sophia headquarters where Mark Scott visited.
We don’t have a transcript of the DOJ’s entire line of questioning. What we do know however is questioning of Ignatov by the DOJ wrapped up today.
Tomorrow Scott’s defense team will have access to Ignatov for cross-examination.
According to Lee, Scott’s attorney intends to establish Ignatov himself was unaware OneCoin didn’t have a blockchain.
The implication being if Ruja Ignatova’s brother and acting OneCoin CEO didn’t know, how was Mark Scott to know.
I believe this ties into intent. Mark Scott’s defense appears to be “OK I might of lied to banks, but I wasn’t doing it to launder money for OneCoin because I knew it was a fraudulent company”.
Konstantin Ignatov is facing a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. His appearance for the DOJ practically confirms a plea deal in his own case.
Unfortunately we’re likely to be waiting some time before the details of that agreement are made public.
We’re also keeping an eye out for Sebastian Greenwood.
Once again, our thanks to Matthew Russel Lee of the Inner City Press for his coverage.
Lee is covering the OneCoin trial live from New York Daily. So be sure to tune in to the Inner City Press Twitter feed for details.
BehindMLM doesn’t have access to the court but we’ll be reporting any significant developments (courtesy of Lee’s reporting).
I found the statement that “K” didn’t know there wasn’t a blockchain to be hilarious.
After all the videos of him in Latin America, Africa and SE Asia telling everyone that OC HAD a blockchain flies in the face of this new lie he didn’t know.
Along with his claim that the German authorities after doing their investigation found that OC had done nothing wrong spiel of his.
At this point we can say, that OneCoin would have surely already provided proof for DOJ if they had a true valid blockchain.
That said, the blockchain matters IMO mainly in the sense that it was false marketing. People thought they are getting involved in cryptocurrency, when all it is, is numbers in a conventional SQL database.
The ponzi aspect of OneCoin comes from the packages which generate virtual coins and the fake internal ever increasing coin value which implies profit for a package buyer. For ponzi, it makes no difference in what form the virtual coin ledger is, OneCoin is still a ponzi-pyramid with or without a blockchain.
But anyway, now it’s clear OneCoin hasn’t been able to provide proof of a valid blockchain for Konstantin’s defence.
Here’s the Day #2 video reports from Inner City Press, where Matthew Russell Lee tells how Konstantin started testifying against OneCoin, Ruja and Scott.
youtu.be/Htei2_BE_lE
I imagine the idea is that he will claim he was simply parroting what his sister and everyone else around her had told him about there being a blockchain, and it never occurred to him to doubt her.
Right from the start, that was his lawyer’s chosen approach: paint him as the patsy, who merely did what he was told without really understanding what was going on, because he isn’t very bright.
His lawyer referred to him as a ‘lunkhead’, that alone is a pretty good sign he is going for a “my client is clearly too stupid to be guilty of cuch a sophisticated fraud” defense.
I’ve noticed quite a few ex-Onecoiners have also expressed the opinion that K is very stupid. Oddly, that belief isn’t shared by the people who knew him in school, who’ve said he got excellent grades without having to work hard for them.
And he and his sister both went to the Gymnasium, the upper tier of the German secondary education system, and he did get his Abitur, the examination you must pass to go on to university.
That doesn’t mean he’s a genius, but he can’t be a total moron either.
release konstantin because konstantin has helped millions of people around the world get financial freedom from OneCoin.
^^ only allowing it for the lulz
@ Chau thi ha:
Yes, I agree with you:
the rats of OneCoin/OneLife have indeed helped many people around the world to financial freedom:
namely the OneCoin/OneLife fraudsters like you, who today make a nice living with the fake millions!
@ Chau thi ha,
U must be a clown.LOL.
The blockchain thing is unnecessary sidetrack.
Please keep in mind I’m not defending Scott, Konstantin or OneCoin here Onecoin is a scam and I have no doubt they both knew it), I’m merely playing with the possibilities of “without reasonable doubt”:
Sure, Konstantin has been on the stage around the world as a “Captain” of OneCoin, telling how awesome blockchain it has. Fact.
Now, if Konstantin (in court) testifies that he didn’t know there was no blockchain – i.e. everybody told him there is one, provided him with all kinds of false info about the non-existing blockchain and he never had a reason to suspect this info given to him…
…there is clearly a reasonable doubt Konstantin has been unaware that the blockchain does not exist. And therefore Mark Scott could have been unaware of it too.
Then to the proper argument:
Mark Scott as a lawyer should have done his due diligence on where the OneCoin money flow comes from and where it goes to.
Mark Scott then should have understood that a company paying recruitment fees from the membership fees of newly recruited members is a pyramid scam.
Mark Scott also should have understood that when returns of investment are paid from the subsequently invested funds, it is a Ponzi fraud.
And therefore Mark Scott should have been aware that OneCoin is a scam and he is laundering criminal proceedings.
This, to me, can be stated without reasonable doubt.
Rest my case.
These words of Konstantin Ignatov from March 2018 Bogota event are now iconic:
(youtu.be/mS-OibcCXtk?t=322)
From 42:00 timemark onwards one can see Konstantin making fun of those who say that there is no blockchain, and something that only three people (Ruja, Veska and “legal” meaning Dilkinska/Valkova) knowing about the blockchain.
(But like it’s sais in the comments above, the blockchain question is not what ultimately determines if OneCoin is a fraud or not — it’s indeed a sidetrack more or less.
OneCoin is a fraud because of the ponzi-pyramid business model, and the fraudelent claims about the underlying tech are just one of the many lies and tricks to facilitate the continuing of this illegitimate business model.)
The end is near. Just see Inner City Press Twitter đ
BTW, will be nice with video, but and in twitter is good enough.
Waiting for igor and other band mate’s!
Out of respect for Inner City Press’ live coverage I don’t want to put up an article transcribing Lee’s tweets till he’s had time to put his own article up.
But bloody hell, this is game over:
Over to you gullible OneCoin investors. Please try and spin that. Go on, I dare you.
AND IT’S ONLY DAY 2 OF THE TRIAL!
AND KONSTANTIN HAS PLEAD GUILTY!
/tries desperately hard not to put an article together yet.
Konstantin is singing like a canary. What a goldmine.
It’s definitely beautiful to have Konstantin Ignatov declaring himself guilty, accepting that Onecoin was a fraud, and cooperating with justice.
Hopefully it makes this Onecoin ship finally sink. Too much money is STILL being poured from third-world countries into this scam, it’s disgusting.
-J
I’m not surprised, he is not so guilty. in this family father and a “father’s big boy”, not a women, are aggressive and cheaters!
And btw, think that the bg government is messed with this! Konst is not so smart, he is just a puppet, little boy, dressed like a man! đ
But anyway – jail will be good to him. Must think before do sometjing like this!
No other way to exist something like onecoin!
This is it.
Btw, once again, want to tell, this is not the biggest scam. In the middle of the 90-st, in Bulgaria, we have a massive bank bankruptcy! All money was stolen. The whole country was in bankrupt. More than this 3,5 billions.
And this money are in the former communist job’s.. And they still rules here! USA must do to the end!
I wish question like “Did You pay some commissions to bg politics?”
Mark doesnât speak or can he read or write in Russian languages.
In the mean time DOJ found communication from Mark Scott wife Lidia Kolesnikova who is Russian and a realtor in Florida communicating with with Sofia office.
Very interesting I am sure she is as much involved in this as Mark.
Mark was working with GILBERT Armenta since 2011 when he was with previous law firm before locks.
It will be anthropologically and psychologically extremely interesting to see what happens next in the OneCoin community.
I will not surprised if they still believe đ
Think – “It can be true”, “No, is not true, they are a liars”, “They will broke our hearts” đ
I just hope that in order to get his plea deal he had to give up where Ruja is hiding.
As for the story line from the so-called leaders of OC, it will be it was a conspiracy to stop OC as the banks, Bitcoin lovers and haters did not want the competition, so they lied, fabricated evidence to get Konstantin to plead guilty.
OneCoin has not done anything wrong and DS proves there is a blockchain and the Exchange is still coming; which will prove everyone wrong. I bet I don’t miss it by much.
Well, Konstantin Ignatov has now joined the “paid haters” clan đ
Some people are so brainwashed and desperate that they’ll still think onecoin has a blockchain…
nop, is just mysql cluster.
So, at least the pregnancy was real…
I told you, want ask him “did you pay to bg politics?”
So strange?! right?
was not, was surrogate mother from Mexico, i think:)
Hmmm. shouldent their be a nice fbi shutdown sign pasted on the oc/ol for xmass?
If this Gilbert guy was Ruja’s boyfriend, who impregnated the surrogate?
Gilbert or her cuck German husband?
And then nobody ever saw or heard from her again (publicly).
Dead at the hands of the Russian mafia or she spent some of that $500 mill to go into hiding.
Russian mafia’s hometurf is Russia. I imagine they don’t extradite to the US either.
Where’s Ken Labine, Tom McMurrain, Denis Murdock, John Reilly, Simon Le, Fred Fok, Sal Leto, Maurice Katz, Steve Gotberg when OC needs them?
I don’t think so, she is alive. The best place is Bulgaria! Not Frankfurt!
And where the others? Dilkinska? Dilkinska is in Bulgaria, but no one search for her! Arghhh, she is fr of mine to big politicians đ Nice!
One of this guy is a part from big show now, here in Bulgaria đ
Whoever’s the kid’s father was, it doesn’t sound like she took it with her. Another of her victims…
Does anyone have info on Frank Schneider? Konstantin mentioned him as involved with OneCoin legal advise, money laundering , the search for Ruja and investigation leaks. But I canât remember having seen his name before.
This is the guy who Konstantin mentioned stole 100m USD from Ruja. Spent 5.2m on horses on a single day.
racingpost.com/bloodstock/phoenix-eyeing-top-class-longevity-after-dominating-two-days-at-goffs/348054
GAME OVER OL SUCKERS – there is no coming back from the testimony today – get over the fact that you’ve all been conned!
RIGHT
And i wait for a quest – “Did you pay for bg politics” đ But no chance for this!
best Judge ever:)
PS: Smoke time:)
nop, i think and you know, that all is biology, just implement to surrogate mother.
99% sure, this is the story. cant tel more, but is the same thing đ
Yes, she still working. But not really, because nothing depends right now from her. Some guys are really angry for gold. like Krum Angelov.
Other change cars monthly .. and so on….
And this is him dressed for the office.
phoenixfund.net/chairman-message/
It warms my heart to read that he is also invested in care and retirement homes in the UK.
It appears that most of the Free Konstantin related posts have disappeared from the “official” ONECOIN EXCHANGE/UPDATES OFFICIAL CHANNEL Facebook group. No other reaction so far, AFAIK.
The Free Konstantin website is still up as I write.
Wednesday Webinar was held today but it wasn’t promoted via the usual channels. It was shorter than usual and no big promoters participated. It contained absolutely nothing interesting or topical.
Chaos and panic among the remaining top leaders?
Waiting for it đ
by the way, specially i’m interesting what will happened with dagcoin and igor alberts and of course his wife đ
specially for her – welcome to sliven wife prison đ
Yes the Serbian scammer Dusan Torbica was one of the main guys pushing the “Free Konstantin” stupidity, but now it’s all been deleted from his FB.
I suspect it won’t be long until his FB is removed completely.
I’m only just now catching up on all the wonderful schlocky entertainment in the courtroom (I mean: drilling holes through floors to find out whether or not your boyfriend is going to leave his wife, then finding out he’s cheating on you with the FBI instead – seriously???). But I thought I’d add a little personal note of levity for once.
I’d had an addition for my little Playmobil collection on my shopping list for a while, and today I spotted it in a bookshop which I didn’t even know had a small toys section.
I set up my new little lodger next to my monitor as I usually do, and it was only when I started catching up on the trial news that I suddenly realised: my god, I’ve got Dr. Ruja in Playmobil staring at me!
It’s absolutely uncanny: the dress sense, the makeup, the over-the-top jewelry, everything.
Put a Onecoin stage backdrop behind her instead of the witch accoutrements she comes with and put a microphone in her hand, and it’s as is she’s walked in straight from one of those Youtube videos. Don’t take my word for it, judge for yourself:
klickypedia.com/sets/70058-witch/
She is alive, and was hiding among the Playmo people until I found her!
A joke: an early bird came too early in spring and fell on the road frozen. Pass a horse who dropped warm s#it on top of the bird.
The bird was revived in warmth, poke its head out and started to sing. A fox heard the singing, came and ate the bird.
LESSON: there is no point start singing when one is up to neck in s#it.
All the top One Cons must be dropping turds just about now.
@Patrik X
OneCoin scammer Dusan Torbica from Serbia wrote:
share-your-photo.com/f3616a33c7
Source: free-konstantin.org/testimonials
November 6 Video:
OneCoin in Court Day #3 – A SHOCK! Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty! Admits OneCoin is a fraud!
youtu.be/Tj3KVO9368M
My recap is gonna have to wait. At an airport and the internet isn’t fast enough.
Some reporting on the proceedings from another source:
(law360.com/articles/1217567)
Broken fingers, HA, a gun in your back, a gun in your mouth — that’s the true OneCoin lifestyle! . đ
This was interesting too, from human perspective:
Some of them are less active on social media on purpose I guess, but it’s time to go after Jose G, Igor A, Udo D, the 3 Brothers, Kari W. etc.
Those big fish scammers should now be taken locally to start the next chapter. Recuperating money where you can for sure find it.
Serial cheater Peter Walsh writes: đ
share-your-photo.com/13594bb6bb
Many other OneCoin scammers do not want to accept the brutal truth. Harry K Tripp continues to defend the fraud and writes, among others:
facebook.com/groups/2135051646562353/
“Many other OneCoin scammers do not want to accept the brutal truth. ”
Nope, they know really what is the truth!
In many Facebook groups for the OneCoin fraud, the comment function has been disabled or comments are manually enabled by the administrators. Of course, only positive comments!
And i’m still waiting for the question – “To which politicians you paid?” Specially, politicians from Bulgaria!
Bulgaria was indeed one of countries that DOJ mentioned which received bribes from OneCoin:
(page 28 ; courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497.98.0.pdf)
It’s incredible that Bulgarian authorities haven’t closed the Sofia office and arrested Veselina Valkova with her minions.
Semjon, courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497/gov.uscourts.nysd.516497.98.0.pdf, interesting, didnt read this.
But is near, that in Bulgaria is to highest level of government.
I know who is the connection with the government (and with the authority!)
I don’t trust of any guy here!
Besides disabling comments, there is a lot of cleaning going on in Facebook groups.
Posts and comments are deleted. Profiles are closed. Looks like it is game over for real now.
are you surprised:) i’m waiting for more special things like arrests for people like igor alberts, like massive suicide in china and so on and so on. i’ve seen it before, here in bulgaria. and no one was guilty!
strange?!
and for this, this is the moment USA to ask – who, who is the man that is behind OC in government and authority!
I personally didn’t want Konstantin to make a deal. One of my reasons why was because all the dirty laundry needed to be exposed in open court for all to see, hear and read.
With a plea deal all the corruption, dirty laundry, major players, etc. are never revealed to the public.
So my hats off to Mark Scott for not taking a plea deal and allowing this testimony to come out in open court, otherwise we would have never learned what we are learning now.
I have to wonder if Sebastian Greenwood will be making an appearance as a witness for the prosecution later in the trial. I sure hope so.
The good news is there is more to come, and I have no doubt it is going to be block buster information too. Only wish I could have been there in person for the trial.
Semjon, Lichtman is really, really good lawyer!
very interesting, good to USA government to not free Konst.
Wahrloos needs a vacation in USA the eagle or sparrow.
Lynndel “Lynn” Edgington, you are right, but i think, soon will be against Ruja! And this will be the end of OC! Konstantin is a big boy dressed like a man! Trust me!
He is not so important and this is not a prob to be 10 yars in jail!
There is so many scammers, like Dilkinska, like Alberts, …
But anyway, BRAVO for USA!
…. And good try for Germany đ
Donât forget without Mark Scott they could not have laundered 400 million. So he is as much fault as the big fishes you guys talking about.
He got a lot of money paid for the dirty work and gave a his partnership in a big law firm. He made at least 17 million within the 18 month:
Which is money from innocent people who put there money in …their retirement maybe even borrowed money to invest.
I eventually the all system of OC collapse when Gilbert Armenta will speak out as well as Sebastian greenwood:
They all should go to jail thatâs what they deserve.
At least Tommi isn’t giving up!
Finnish OneCoin leader Tommi Vuorinen writes on his Facebook page (cited on MuroBBS) that all stories about Konstantin pleading guilty are fabrications made by a fake journalist who hates ONE.
According to Tommi, the journalist just went to the NY court house and produced fabricated live tweets and other made up content. He berates Finnish press lacking source criticism for making a story about such fake news (is.fi/digitoday/art-2000006299627.html)
Looks as if OC is dying after 5 years and the hope must be that the materials will identify the top level leaders and then cascade down to all the serial scammers and liars like Wahlross and Juha and all the other motivational leaders who ran this charade.
Alberts and Kari are now apparently active in Dagcoin. The BBC podcast series appears to have allowed Alberts to position himself as a victim rather than a perpetrator.
Platincoin is also one of the alternative options so fake cryptocurrencies are the future of money.
What has happened with Europol and their alleged investigative oversight of these pyramid centralised schemes.
Get the message out through all channels.
@Limerick lady
I wouldn’t assume OC is dying soon. It’s a cat with nine lives. Just this week they organised a well attended event in Mongolia: youtube.com/watch?v=EbfZ6bJz-f4
@Limerick lady:
Europol is only a coordinating and information-sharing body, plus can provide technical expertise in areas where the police forces of some member states may be lacking.
It cannot initiate investigations of its own, and has no police powers of its own, since the EU doesn’t have a criminal justice system.
It’s up to the authorities in a member state to go after OC and start their own police investigation, in which they can then get Europol involved, which in turn maybe could contact forces in other countries.
Maybe some of the countries involved see it as a matter only for financial regulatory agencies, and if those have issued a warning and gotten OC’s bank accounts closed, they’ve done all that needs to be done.
We also don’t have a clear view of where the bulk of OC’s money comes from, the amounts for each European country may be quite small. If one takes a brief look at where the merchants on Dealshaker are located for instance, there don’t seem to be a great many in western Europe, or the EU in general.
If that’s representative of the spread of non-merchant members, it may well be considered a very minor scam in most places.
But it’s quite amazing that the Bulgarian judicial authorities, despite having raided Onecoin’s offices in 2018, and having publicly declared that OC is a criminal organisation, seem to have done absolutely nothing since then, and that the office continues to operate.
I’m sure it’s got nothing at all to do with the fact that Ruja in 2009-2010 held a senior position in a company owned by Tsvetelina Borislavova, the then companion of the current Prime Minister, BoĂŻko Borissov (who in turn has tons of shady connections of his own), then already a prominent politician.
Generally, it’s amazing how little attention this story is getting. If one remembers how much coverage Bernie Madoff got, and that Onecoin is at least in the same ballpark, and maybe even stole more money than Madoff, which would make it the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, it’s very odd that for live coverage we’ve only got one independent journalist tweeting from the courtroom.
(Plus, there seems to be someone from a specialist legal website there, but that’s behind a paywall.) Onecoin also wove a much more tangled web, and scammed a huge number of people compared to Madoff, which one think would make it even more interesting as a story.
P.S.
Thanks for the Platincoin mention. I’d never heard of that. They sell what they call a “PLC Secure Box”, a little computer supposedly used for mining, and supposedly patented. There is another crypto MLM scam which sold something similar (I cannot remember the name right now), which was just a Raspberry Pi (of which I own 4), which IIRC they sold for about 30 times its retail price (about $35 US).
That one wasn’t even properly disguised, they showed the PCB quite clearly, they’d only rather pathetically edited out the Raspberry Pi name and logo from the picture.
I could be wrong, but at a very quick first glance, this Platincoin ‘secure box’ appears to be a similar small computer, a BeagleBone Black, crudely disguised by putting it in a custom box with the board mounted upside down (which, for thermal reasons, generally isn’t a good idea), so the tell-tale position of the power and network connectors appears reversed.
(I notice such things because I’ve made several bespoke enclosures for my Raspberry Pis, which like the BeagleBone are sold as a bare PCB.) I’ll definitely look into this further when I have the time, but we can safely rule out the possibility they developed a computer of their own.
P.P.S.
I might perhaps also add that it’s totally preposterous to claim that either a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi, not even its latest 4 version which reaches PC-level performance, have the computing power to be realistically used for mining any cryptocurrency.
There’s also of course nothing about either of them that can be patented, not even by the manufacturers, and they almost exclusively run free, open-source software. I’d love to find out what the Platincoin people claim to have a patent on.
The only one posting on the ONECOIN EXCHANGE/UPDATES OFFICIAL [Really?] CHANNEL is Luca Miatton. And his posts are all empty as the material is probably only shared to his friends. This just leads to a lot of group members asking what is wrong and why there is no info.
Headless chicken mode much?
@Niente
The OneCoin scammers from Austria spread new lies by Luca Miatton from Italy (partial quote):
It also mentions that 5,000 people are expected to arrive at the upcoming scam event in Verona, etc.
share-your-photo.com/e18c6174b3
@PassingBy: Madoff’s scam mostly targeted very rich people. OneCoin targeted ordinary schmoes who don’t have journalists on speed dial.
OneCoin is believed to have taken around ÂŁ100m in the UK, mostly from Muslim communities. By contrast the London Capital & Finance Ponzi took in around ÂŁ230m, mostly from your classic Daily Mail scam victim (white, middle-class and elderly), and coverage of LCF is still mostly confined to small articles in the business pages of the nationals (i.e. around page 40).
If that’s the kind of coverage a scam twice as big as OneCoin gets (in UK terms, not global terms) then OneCoin isn’t going to get much of a look-in.
“People lose money in scam” is generally local news, “dog bites man” fodder.
@Malthusian: very true. I look at the Guardian almost every day, and I listen to BBC news a lot, in particular Radio 4, which I suppose doesn’t make me all that different in the amount of British news I consume from many people in the UK.
I also have an interest in any news about scams and frauds of all kinds, so I notice such stories especially. Yet I’ve never heard of this London Capital & Finance scam.
As to Madoff: most of his private victims actually weren’t all that rich. While he maintained a million dollar minimum investment limit to deal with anyone personally, a lot of his money came from feeder funds.
People with much less money could participate in those, and they simply bundled that money and passed it on to Madoff. A lot of those people didn’t even know who Madoff was: the guys running those feeder funds often kept that fact hidden.
They were making huge amounts by charging the usual management fees from their clients, and didn’t want them to know that they didn’t do any managing, but just gave all the money to Madoff. (Madoff also didn’t always stick to his one million limit. If someone was very lucky and knew him personally, he might be kind enough to rob them of smaller lifetime savings as well.)
It’s also noticeable that not a single Wall Street or other financial sector insider ever invested with Madoff.
A lot of such people looked into doing that over the years, as well as a lot of competitors who wanted to know how on earth he managed to generate the returns he did, and they all concluded that it couldn’t be kosher.
Part of what protected him was that almost nobody took their suspicions to the level of thinking he might simply be running a massive Ponzi.
That a prominent, respectable Wall Street figure (thanks to his always entirely legitimate market maker business) could be engaged in such a straightforward, almost primitive, scam didn’t even figure into their speculations about what his secret might be.
He also had another protection: a lot of his biggest victims weren’t individuals but charities.
Those (a) tend to be run be well-meaning people in their spare time, not financial experts; and (b) rarely take out any capital, they just want the yearly interest while keeping the capital itself intact so they can keep going forever.
Perfect for a Ponzi scammer, and especially Madoff, whose spiel was not offering implausibly high returns, but implausibly stable ones.
Those charities were a large factor in why his Ponzi ran for decades, when most collapse after a few years at most.
All Ponzis try to get people to take out as little money as possible, and be happy with only looking at amounts on their statements. With charities that is already the default behaviour.
@PassingBy, the only thing big about OneCoin is the amount of victims. Yes the amount of money is big, but only about 1/3 the size of Madoff and that’s the top end of what is believed OC took in.
Realistically it is more like in the $8-$15 Billion Dollar range, where Madoff was over $60 Billion Dollars.
It also did not get as much attention here in the US and didn’t have that many people joining here as Ruja deliberately stayed out of the US for fear of the US Authorities taking action against her.
To be honest I don’t think the US investors had any more invested in OC as the people in the UK had invested. Numbers are real hard to come by for US investors, as they had to join using an offshore residence and bank account.
The big market for OC was SE Asia, and that’s where the bulk of the money came from. Coming later was Latin America and Africa, as that push didn’t start until the fall of last year.
In all of this China is going to be the biggest loser in terms of money and people involved. My guess is that China had $4 Billion invested in OC, and that is the starting point.
Another reason why Madoff got more attention was because of his being the former NASDAQ Chairman and his connections to Wall Street, while Ruja was only known within the OC circle of victims.
I agree there needs to be more attention from the press on this, and now that this trial is happening that might change.
Let’s hope so. The more news outlets reporting on it makes it harder for the still believers to spout their conspiracy theories to their downlines.
Just my 2-cents worth. By the way, if you are inclined, contact me by clicking on my name above.
That Madoff amount is nowhere near correct.
The $60 billion figure was the usual huge overestimation which almost always happens when a Ponzi collapses: the media start reporting the total of what the victims believed they had in investments, i.o.w. the completely phony amounts with fictitious interests added the scammer shows them. It’s never what people have actually put in.
The equivalent for OneCoin would be multiplying the total number of coins they’ve handed out by their own made-up price, which nobody ever paid.
The trustee in the Madoff case ultimately estimated the total actual loss to investors at $18 billion, and a lot of his biggest investors weren’t private investors but charities (not that that isn’t bad, but the direct impact on people isn’t the same).
Considering that Madoff operated for about 40 years, and OneCoin for less than 5 (and less than three before things started going badly wrong), they look like very much being in the same league of all-time-biggest scams.
Scams that get into the billions range in real, not made-up, money, are already pretty rare. It simply isn’t that easy to gather that kind of money before the scheme either collapses, or the law catches up with you.
Let me clarify the size of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi. He took in close to $65 Billion Dollars, but paid out close to $45 Billion Dollars before it collapsed.
The Receiver to date has paid out over $18 Billion Dollars and is expected to pay out close to another Billion Dollars before this is over to the victims.
This is from assets frozen, sale of properties, jewelry, cars, clawbacks from net winners, and cash still in the accounts at the time of arrest.
Over 2,500 nonprofits were closed and at least 7 major foundations were bankrupted from their involvement, directly or indirectly in Madoff’s Ponzi.
The same is going to be true with OneCoin. While whatever amount they took in, they paid out about 60% of all money invested from what we can tell at this time.
The top 10 promoters of OneCoin were paid out close to $175 Million collectively if their claims of monthly payments were correct. It remains to be seen if there will ever be a receiver appointed in OneCoin to go after the new winners.
I don’t see this happening. Want to talk about an accounting nightmare, OneCoin is the #! Ponzi nightmare of them all in this regard.
The only way I see net winners having to pay is for them to be charged criminally, found guilty and having to go to prison and pay a fine for their role in this Ponzi. Otherwise they will get to keep their millions with no consequences.
share-your-photo.com/a7e97376c9
youtube.com/watch?v=IifnkkiXldQ&feature=youtu.be
OneCoin scammer René Harb from Austria wrote on Facebook on November 7, 2019:
share-your-photo.com/a6fcadb99d
What is RenĂ© Harb’s job? Professional optimist? đ
share-your-photo.com/a1bd80f064
A video with OneCoin scammers RenĂ© Harb (left) and Martin Maier (“MaMa”), here referred to as “Mr. DealShaker”:
share-your-photo.com/3306c468b8
youtube.com/watch?v=loDFwnBvu54&list=PLz6lBlCNUzw3iXiamh1hCFixTylcbVU2x&index=138
On xing.com the cheater RenĂ© Harb is friends with the crook Anton “Toni” Federspiel, one of the leading OneCoin scammers in Austria.
In Russia, too, some OneCoin members recognize the brutal truth.
Russian OneCoin cheater Andrey Zharikov has uploaded a video titled:
share-your-photo.com/69c2f3d119
Of the 46 comments I have had some translated by Google.
Natalie Schevchenko wrote:
Myrzabek Abduov answered:
Final Fantasy wrote:
Sergejs Mahrpvskis wrote:
If you understand the Russian language, you should read the rest of the comments yourself. It is typical that the OneCoin fraudster Andrey Zharikov also recommends other fraud systems such as SkyWay, OMNIA and so on.
Promotional links to OneCoin scams via the domain globalstarclub.com
share-your-photo.com/f77b9b4720
youtube.com/watch?v=s6sNLRocuO4
Scammers Cristi Calina from Romania (left) and Luca Miatton from Italy (right) have been cheating together for some time now!
share-your-photo.com/4c5a49d532
youtube.com/watch?v=O90d_BmxZk8
A very interesting video from November 2019.
share-your-photo.com/8cabf092f3
youtube.com/watch?v=IifnkkiXldQ&feature=youtu.be
Who uploaded this video to the “Coin Corner – The ONE!” YouTube channel? Most of the 182 videos on this channel promote the OneCoin scam.
The start was on March 11, 2016. Since February 2020, videos for the projects of Duncan Arthur, who developed the NewDealShaker for the OneCoin fraudsters in Sofia in the past, have also been uploaded to this channel.
share-your-photo.com/46dfd8d87a
The domain coincorner.se was registered on December 27, 2019 and is linked to on this YouTube channel. An owner is not named, there is also no imprint.
Although I am still missing the final proof, I am of the opinion that the operator is Andreas Ă hlin-Lietzow, also known as Andreas Ă hlin. Here are three screenshots from my archive:
share-your-photo.com/357d3925b9
share-your-photo.com/9411483976
share-your-photo.com/769bccec07
The website dig1coin.se mentioned in the last screenshot no longer exists. The domain can be purchased for $ 26.99.
share-your-photo.com/9b062a45e9
Here is an old screenshot from dig1coin.se
share-your-photo.com/544eeb589f
The look and structure of dig1coin.se and coincorner.se are absolutely identical or comparable. Andreas Ă hlin-Lietzow basically only changed the name, but kept the structure.
@Melanie, Andreas Ă hlin has been critisizing OneCoin already quite a long time. Basically he changed his opinion about OneCoin totally.
@WhistleBlowerFin
Okay, but then I don’t understand why he still regularly quotes the lies from OneCoin weekly newsletters.
coincorner.se/OneLife-Network-Artiklar
Melanie, Andreas Ă hlin is currently unofficial information liaison officer in Scandinavia for Duncan Arthur’s Unica/OvidGlobal.
Addition to comments #80 and 81
What happened to OneCoin scammer René Harb from Austria? I just read that post to his company PHOENIX VERTRIEBS GMBH cannot be delivered. Is he, like Ruja Ignatova, on the run?
northdata.de/Phoenix+Vertriebs+GmbH,+Oberwart/434780h
Video from February 17, 2020:
share-your-photo.com/e5a4adcc35
youtube.com/watch?v=11iMDfh-mXs&list=PLagYBMDafgVaPKXNUnncQqCf5Y13vTtuC&index=25
RenĂ© Harb has also been a speaker at fraud events in Austria. Here’s an example:
share-your-photo.com/76ea387219
The email address shown in the screenshot belongs to two other OneCoin scammers from Austria: Stephan Gruber and Stefan Wetzelberger:
share-your-photo.com/6092af286f
Both have claimed in the past that the products they offer can also be paid for with OneCoins. This notice is now missing from their website.