UK OneCoin money launderers fight extradition to US
Two OneCoin money launderers in the UK are fighting extradition to the US.
Christopher John Hamilton and Robert McDonald are adamant if they have a case to answer to then it should be in the UK.
Appearing in court last Friday, defense counsel for Hamilton and Roberts argued
most of the alleged wrongdoing or harm took place in Britain, (and that) should prevent their extradition.
It is almost impossible to know where most of the harm from OneCoin fraud occurred. The one thing we can say for certain is that it is not in the U.S.”
This is based on OneCoin not ever really taking off in the US, leading to the majority of investor losses occurring elsewhere.
As reported by Law360 (paywall), in addition to laundering OneCoin investor funds, Hamilton and Roberts are also accused of stealing $32 million from Gilbert Armenta.
Defense counsel dismissed Armenta being a US citizen and resident as having any relevance to extradition proceedings.
It would be absurd to rely on the fact that Armenta is a victim whose interests have any bearing on where Hamilton and McDonald should be prosecuted.
Armenta was painted as a “middle-man”, with defense counsel arguing the funds in question belonged to Ruja Ignatova – who is of course missing.
Not sure what the timeframe for resolution of UK extradition proceedings are, but Friday was the last day for a hearing on the matter.
If Westminister Magistrates’ Court nixes extradition to the US, it’s highly likely Hamilton and McDonald will walk.
Second in notoriety only to Bulgaria, the home of OneCoin, UK authorities actively worked to ensure maximum OneCoin related harm to consumers.
In 2019 the City of London Police decided investigating OneCoin was too hard. And who could forget the FCA trembling in fear when OneCoin’s PR team threatened them over a consumer fraud warning.
The FCA buckled and retracted the warning, paving the way for OneCoin to publicly represent legitimacy in the UK.
Later that same year OneCoin went on to hold a marketing event, arguably its biggest ever, at Wembley Arena.
In 2020 the FCA approved a key figure in OneCoin’s money laundering operations, for the position of “Money Laundering Compliance Officer” at an unrelated company.
To date the only action UK authorities have taken against OneCoin was the arrest of three men in 2019, two of which I believe are Hamilton and McDonald.
Which in turn would mean the arrests were likely begrudgingly done at the behest of the US who, along with Germany, seem to be the only countries interested in holding OneCoin’s inner-circle accountable.
Whether the UK’s courts add themselves to the country’s OneCoin financial fraud enforcement shamelist remains to be seen.
Update 31st August 2022 – Christopher Hamilton has lost his initial bid against extradition to the US.
In a ruling handed down on Tuesday August 30th, Robert McDonald was excused on humanitarian grounds.
Dear UK authorities;
If you’re not interested in prosecuting OneCoin scammers, get out of the way.
Why should the US have jurisdiction if there was arguably very little harm there – your statement above?
Because these fuckers worked with scammers in the US.
See Mark Scott’s “waaah but I mostly scammed people not in the US” bullshit defense, which didn’t work.
Scamming people in countries outside of the US shouldn’t mean anything if the US is the only country willing to go after you, innit?
The City of London Police and the FCA should be held accountable and reimburse anyone who was scammed by OneCoin since they dropped the case.
What about the guys in Ireland too who made many millions in this scam why are they not being pulled in by the Irish authorities?
Relax guy. We’ll let the US handle it and then block them from extraditing anyone because reasons.
NAME AND SHAME PLEASE.
No one should claim that the British authorities have done nothing. An old screenshot from my archive proves the opposite. Victims of OneCoin scam have been urged to contact Action Fraud… 🙂
PS: I wanted to upload the screenshot but the image got locked!!! Why? What are the British authorities trying to hide?
This screenshot from November 5, 2019 has not been banned:
share-your-photo.com/e2c8d12ea1
Yet the City of London Police have told me they have no files on RavenR Capital Ltd:
Fact is everyone is hoping for the US, which has the biggest resources, to handle all major prosecutions.
However, the resistance of other countries to prosecute, where the harm actually occurred by a landslide, will eventually lead to many perps just walking away.
Also, the IS will not restitute foreign victims. The money recovered stays in the US.
The UK needs to step up. And the prosecutors in all countries need to separate the people that sold OneCoin from those who may have knowingly laundered money for OneCoin. It is not the same and requires different standards of proof.
Stop mixing and matching issues and get it done. The SDNY has already caused major issues. They may lose this for all victims.
Yeah mate, they’re not doing or are going to do anything. In case it wasn’t obvious.
I agree that’s a problem but outside of the US and Germany the rest of the world is happy to let a multi-billion Ponzi scheme slide. That’s not SDNY’s fault.
In regard to your statement that the IS will not return money recovered to foreign nationals is not true. It has been done in many cases brought in the US that had members outside the US.
Lynn, you are correct that restitution can happen. My point is that it is discretionary in money laundering cases and the US Govt pays itself before any victims.
The costs to the Govt must have been tremendous at this point and very little money in the scheme of things, no pun intended, has been seized as far as we know.
Many of these fraudsters have their funds in countries the US will not get their hands on or will never find. Greenwood a prime example.
UAE will not help. That’s why the horse dealer is not being prosecuted. They can’t get him.
The US indictments do not include a restitution clause. There are more trials to come and extraditions to fight. More money to be spent.
The US will not subsidize victims. I just don’t see it, but hope that it happens.
The real question is why they only go after money launderers and not just the big money income earners, which are much more easy to find and to recuperate money from.
If today they can freeze assets of Russians and their companies that are just linked to their President, with no real legal jurisdiction, why not freezing assets of the 3 brothers the Igor’s, Udo’s etc wherever they find them?
They are living in plane sight, travelling around, scamming more people and bragging with their luxury.
The true really big question is why haven’t the countries where these major Ponzi pimps lived and stole from their fellow countrymen did their job and arrest them?
Why hasn’t the UK charged them and Kameron Hye? That is the question that should be answered.
The US went after the money launders because that is what they got Konstantin, Pike, Scott, Armenta, and extraditing Schneider and these two for their roles.
US citiznes were not targeted, and those from the US who joined did so using VPN’s and offshore bank accounts.
Ruja Ignatova has just been added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive -list.
There’s a reward of up to $100,000 for the information leading to her arrest.
fbi.gov/news/stories/ruja-ignatova-added-to-fbis-ten-most-wanted-fugitives-list
Here’s Ruja’s new FBI flyer. Congrats to her for the high rankings.. 😀
fbi.gov/wanted/topten/ruja-ignatova/@@download.pdf
The major news wires have picked up the story of Ruja’s addition to the FBI’s list.
NOLINK://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/cryptoqueen-now-one-fbis-10-wanted-rcna36139
I was just scrolling through Google’s news site on my phone when suddenly I’m looking at the face of the “Cryptoqueen” who didn’t know how to pronounce “genesis.”
Haha, $100,000 from the US vs. 5000 EUR from Europol.
Says it all really…
Hi Guys,
First post on this website, always used it as a reference point in my research in to one coin.
Firstly I have to applaud Oz for the contribution to raising awareness on one coin being a massive Ponzi scam.
On to my point for this post, I agree with probably 99% of I read on this site as there’s alot of evidence behind it.
Other than the case with Christopher Hamilton, who may I add played a key role in the FBI getting involved and in turn toppling this whole thing.
I’ve really gone deep in to the Christopher Hamilton case yet there seems to be very little evidence implicating the two attached in the post other than a single email which references the word “Ponzi”.
If you remember back to the Gilbert armenta case, the whole reason he got caught was because he sent UK heavys to the property of Mr Hamilton as he would not return money to an unregistered account that was not in their contractual agreement in purchasing a portion of viola as per companies House.
To me, it appears Mr Hamilton acted correctly throughout other than being caught with an extremely large amount of bankers drafts, to which he claims were posted to him minutes before the police arrived.
I agree there is no smoke withoutfire but I feel the evidence point to two group of victims the people who lost life savings and in my opinion Cristopher Hamilton and Mr Richards who in all likelihood if are exterdited will lose their lives and not money.
I feel that these two men have just been caught up in Gilbert Armentas web who was acting on behalf of the real mastermind that was Ruja ignatova.
Nobody is saying Christopher Hamilton is the equivalent of Ruja Ignatova in OneCoin.
Hamilton and McDonald were very much part of OneCoin’s money laundering operations, and there are criminal charges to answer for.
All that’s happening here are criminals trying to get out of spending a sizable portion of their lives in prison. Nothing more.
The Hamilton and McDonald indictments are sealed, so any discussion here is based on guesses.
If DOJ went after them I would say the cases are solid, there are many other OneCoin figures that should be prosecuted who have not been yet.
US DOJ now offering victim services to all OneCoin victims worldwide:
justice.gov/usao-sdny/united-states-v-ruja-ignatova-et-al-and-gilbert-armenta
These rights include the following:
The right to be reasonably protected from the accused.
The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused.
The right not to be excluded from any such public court proceeding, unless the court, after receiving clear and convincing evidence, determines that testimony by the victim would be materially altered if the victim heard other testimony at that proceeding.
The right to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving release, plea, sentencing, or any parole proceeding.
The reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government in the case.
The right to full and timely restitution as provided in law.
The right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay.
The right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy.
The right to be informed in a timely manner of any plea bargain or deferred prosecution agreement.
The right to be informed of the rights under this section and the services described in section 503(c) of the Victims’ Rights and Restitution Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 10607(c)) and provided contact information for the Office of the Victims’ Rights Ombudsman of the Department of Justice.
I respect the above comments completely, but as far as I’m aware, didn’t London city police drop all charges against Hamilton and Mcdonald?
Will be interesting in the coming months to see what becomes of this.
The UK authorities didn’t drop anything. They deferred to the US. The UK with it’s small police forces with overlapping jurisdictions couldn’t do this as well as the US and the US started being concerned about OC long before.
As mentioned above, this stuff is sealed mostly. We don’t really know much.
Does anyone still really believe Ruja could mastermind anything?
They will be extradited and face trial. It is not a case of mistaken identity or an oligarch with political connections hanging about in Austria, Dubai or Switzerland.
@Stevie, I know this to be incorrect as I remember seeing a document “which I will try to find now”.
Confirming London city police had dropped all charges.
Without doubt I do not believe that the pair are completely innocent, I do definitely get the sense that this would be Gilbert Armenta trying to buy himself less Jail time.
Sure we will find out in coming months.
Bad news from United Kingdom!
reuters.com/world/uk/british-man-cannot-be-extradited-us-over-fake-cryptocurrency-scheme-court-rules-2023-11-16/
Had this one on my list to get to. Crazy week :(.
Hamilton can breathe easily.
The English authorities are not going to do anything and even if they did, the penalties are laughable and the chance of any prison time or forfeiture is zero.
Christopher John Hamilton is or was a director of 18 companies in the United Kingdom:
share-your-photo.com/ac582657db
Can you launder more money with many companies than with just one?
He is currently only active in two companies:
TWIST2PAY LIMITED (12385749)
share-your-photo.com/33e9c4d685
VIOLA INS. LTD (11194743)
share-your-photo.com/fd1abfd138
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/1gxXtEz81Cy9LBk_L1aiu3xTd1Q/appointments