Episode one of Netflix’s new Money: Explained mini-series features OneCoin and BitConnect.

Both are MLM Ponzi schemes that bilked investors out of billions of dollars.

Money: Explained cites OneCoin and BitConnect as part of a segment exploring technology making proliferation of scams easier.

The infamous Carlos Mattos BitConnect event footage is shown on the screen but, other than using it to segue into crypto Ponzi schemes, Money: Explained doesn’t go into details.

OneCoin however got its own mini expose.

Money: Explained starts with an introduction of Ruja Ignatova (right) and her infamous “bitcoin killer” speech.

Footage from the Wembley Stadium 2016 event plays, emphasizing Ignatova’s use of tactics used by scammers covered earlier in the episode.

Top OneCoin net-winner Igor Alberts and his wife Andrea Cimbala get a mention, as some of the people Ignatova “tricked” into promoting OneCoin.

Can’t say I agree with the phrasing. Alberts stole millions through OneCoin and the company only ever had once source of revenue, new investment.

After OneCoin he then went on to scam people out of even more millions through DagCoin, a OneCoin clone started up by former OneCoin scammers.

Money: Explained’s OneCoin segment plays through the lead up to the Ponzi scheme’s 2017 collapse.

But when the day came when people would be able to turn OneCoin into cash, and become rich beyond their wildest dreams, Ruja was nowhere to be found.

The crypto queen vanished into thin air. She’d made the whole thing up.

Next Money: Explained goes over “the warning signs” leading up to OneCoin’s collapse.

A 2015 CoinTelegraph article is cited as one of the earliest examples of a OneCoin warning sign.

A whole year earlier in 2014, BehindMLM reviewed OneCoin and correctly identified it as a Ponzi scheme.

Regulatory warnings against OneCoin are also brought up – as well as their dismissal by the OneCoin cult-mind.

But to many investors, those warnings didn’t matter.

Thanks to another tactic: Insist your scam is definitely not a scam.

Footage of Ruja Ignatova plays, again from the 2016 UK event, declaring on stage to regulators that OneCoin is ‘the most transparent, most powerful and most legal cryptocurrency out there.’

Of course none of that was true.

Next Money: Explained transitions to the US criminal lawsuits. Confusingly, Money: Explained flashes a screenshot of the civil class action complaint while the show’s narrator introduces the criminal cases.

The case against Ruja is ongoing but Ruja’s brother, who took over OneCoin after she disappeared, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges.

A screenshot of a petition flashes up on screen, showing almost 20,000 OneCoin investors demanding Konstantin Ignatov’s release.

This leads into how victims of fraud “process” getting scammed. Jen McAdams’ OneCoin Victim Support and Information Group is brought up as one example.

We’ll never know the true number of victims hurt by OneCoin.

40% of victims don’t tell anybody. Not even their friends or family.

And only 20% report it to authorities. But these are just estimates.

In 2019 the DOJ claimed OneCoin was a $4 billion Ponzi scheme.

Based on my coverage of OneCoin since 2014, I peg OneCoins victims at around a million. Actual account numbers will be much higher due to duplicate accounts.

Ruja Ignatova remains at large. Ted Nuyten continues to celebrate Igor Alberts fraud through his website Business for Home.

Alberts and his wife will take to the stage at Business For Home’s 2021 Virtual Conference event, to be held later this year.

Evidently none of the other thirty-two speakers mind being associated with one of the most notorious MLM Ponzi net-winners of all time.

Money:Explained debuted on Netflix on May 11th, 2021. The mini-series is available to anyone with a Netflix subscription.