What happened to OneCoin CEOs Pablo Munoz and Pierre Arens?
One of the more endearing mysteries surrounding OneCoin is fate of its two short-lived CEOs; Pierre Arens and Pablo Munoz.
With input from a OneCoin insider, today we go behind the scenes to shed light on their abrupt departures.
Both Pablo Munoz and Pierre Arens were “outside recruits”.
They were figureheads recruited from legitimate companies with established reputations.
They were there to make the thing look legitimate.
Pablo Munoz was appointed OneCoin’s CEO in late 2016.
Munoz once held an executive position at Avon and… well, that’s really all anyone seemed to know about him professionally.
Munoz, a US citizen, operated out of Florida and apparently
is one of the most unpleasant people you could ever meet. He insisted on flying First Class everywhere.
Beyond appearing in a few marketing videos targeting South America, publicly Munoz didn’t do much for OneCoin.
Apart from the whole “being associated with a Ponzi scheme” reputation killer, it was a good deal for Munoz.
Munoz’s OneCoin CEO stint reportedly saw him sign a €2.5 million EUR a year contract.
On May 7th, 2017, OneCoin held a marketing event in Macau.
Munoz was supposed to speak at the event but failed to show up.
In the lead up to the Macau event, The Gerlach Report claimed Chinese authorities were looking to make arrests at the event.
This was later proven to be a fabrication on The Gerlach Report’s behalf.
At the time though Pablo Munoz was none the wise, and purportedly terrified by the possibility of his arrest.
It spooked Munoz to such an extent, and I am not making this up, he faked having had a traffic accident with a cement truck on the way to the airport in Florida!
He claimed he couldn’t walk, etc.
The photo he sent of the “accident” was quickly found on Google Images where he lifted it.
Munoz failing to show at the Macau event signaled the end of his tenure at OneCoin.
As far as I know Munoz was paid out for the rest of 2.5 million EUR contract. After which he ‘was allowed to fade away‘ quietly.
OneCoin never publicly addressed what happened to Munoz.
I think he knew everything looking back. And he’s a US citizen and resident.
At the Macau event Munoz was supposed to attend, Pierre “Pitt” Arens was named OneCoin’s new CEO.
Arens, a banker from Luxembourg nobody’d heard of, also didn’t have much of an impact at OneCoin.
Both Arens and Munoz realized very early on that Ruja was impossible to work for. They also both clashed with Irina (Dilkinska).
Both were surprised that they couldn’t get anything answered.
Again, beyond appearing in a few OneCoin marketing videos, Arens didn’t appear to do much for OneCoin publicly.
Arens was clueless. He delegated everything.
Irina eventually refused to speak to him. He’d appear on videos and at events and have his picture taken and that was about it.
He has quite a superiority complex. I thought he seemed to resent being this successful Luxembourg banker and having to report to Bulgarians.
He’d do things like tell random members of the office to make him a coffee or fetch him a sandwich.
He started asking questions and quickly became unpopular with Ruja.
A few months into his appointment, Arens was purportedly on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Pitt’s paranoia was over the top.
He’d complain that the authorities are onto him because it was taking longer to have his passport checked, he though he heard people in his garden at night, etc.
Eventually just before Ruja went missing, Arens had what I think was a panic attack at an airport. Some claim it was a heart attack.
(removed) apparently claims that Arens and (Muhammad) Zafar got into a physical altercation just before that. I can’t confirm that.
Like Munoz, Arens was initially on a €2 million EUR annual salary.
Before he quit in October 2017, Arens reportedly demanded
his annual salary … be more than doubled, because of the stress, risk and reputational damage.
(When) he left (he) refused to return his $120 mobile phone and sulked that the company ‘owed him money’ when he got a call to return the phone, and the $ 100 laptop with the cheapest laptop cover they could find at Argos.
OneCoin of course didn’t announce Arens’ departure. Instead it was revealed through an interview by local media in Luxembourg.
HQ also has a culture of “you don’t say anything”.
When a person is gone, it’s like they never existed. It’s as if all of the senior leaders have left never were there.
Pablo and Pitt are long forgotten. Nobody discusses Ruja either, and definitely not Momchil (Nikov) nor Irina.
All up Arens was OneCoin’s CEO for about five months. Whether he received his full €2.5 million EUR contracted salary is unclear.
A year later (Arens) sent a lawyer’s letter of demand to HQ.
Nobody was going to take it seriously.
Since leaving OneCoin, neither Munoz of Arens have made public appearances in any professional capacity.
Presumably out there somewhere enjoying their millions, both men have dropped off the face of the Earth.
FWIW, Pablo Munoz used to be “President, North America” (and senior VP) of Avon, having moved from Tupperware in June 2013. That makes him basically 2nd only to CEO Sheri McCoy. There was no mention why he left Avon and joined OneLife scam.
Before Tupperware, Munoz spend 5 years at Sara Lee Corp (left as “exec director of biz dev”) and earlier, Booz Allen Hamilton (consultants) and Abbott Laboratories.
$2 million dollars and all you can eat first class airfares?
I think they were very clear that Pablo was the CEO of OneLife, not OneCoin?
OneLife == OneCoin
Allegedly Arens was hired for the planned IPO process which of course never took place, where as Munoz was purely only OneLife MLM marketing side CEO.
We all know that. Just point being they had two CEOs, one for OneLife (Pablo) and one for OneCoin (Pierre). Like WBF said in previous comment.
As if it makes any difference.
Pablo Munoz (front left) with Aron Steinkeller, Ruja Ignatova, Mihail Petrovic and Sebastian Greenwood. Farther back, with glasses, the serial scammer Udo Carsten Deppisch:
share-your-photo.com/77447bb20d
The photo was posted on Facebook on September 30, 2016.
Being in the US, Pablo had to have had a shock when Konstantin was arrested and put in jail. He has to be sweating bullets wondering if he is next.
Hey Melanie, delete that photo or else the DOJ will see that Konsti was indeed only responsible for arranging the napkins on the coffee table 🙂
Don’t know about Pablo but if we are talking about Americans, I think at least Gilbert R Armenta is about to be in very hot water — if he isn’t already. He has been pretty important figure in facilitating the OneCoin scam.
He was the owner JSC Capital Bank in Georgia(country) which provided prepaid credit cards to OneCoin members back in 2015-2016.
Unsurprisingly, the bank’s banking licence of was revoked in November 2016 because “The NBG Auditing process detected that the bank had ignored requirements for prevention of legalizing illegal revenues, as well as various facts of violation of NBG regulations, resolutions and instructions.”
( source: home.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/ge/pdf/2017/Georgian Banking Sector Overview_2016 Q3.pdf ; p. 5 about licensce revocation ; p. 24 of Arementa’s ownership)
He was/is principal in companies Zala Group LLC (bizapedia.com/az/zala-group-llc.html) and ONE EUX, LLC(bizapedia.com/fl/one-eux-llc.html) which were providing credit card related services to OneCoin.
See the article Oz made back in the day about One Eux and Zala — the drug money connection with Zala particularly interesting.
Gilbert R Armenta is currently the leader in Fates Group (fatesgroup.com/en/leadership.html).
In Mark S Scott’s search warrant document, Fates Group was mentioned as one of companies which laundered OneCoin criminal proceeds:
(page 19-20 ; scribd.com/document/412839388/S-D-N-Y-1-17-Cr-00630-ER-71-1-SearchWarrant-MarkScott)
Armenta is also connected to Mark S Scott for some his companies share the same Florida address with Armenta’s companies, including Zala:
bizapedia.com/addresses/2636-s-acanthus-mesa-az-85209.html
At pittarens.wordpress.com/author/pittarens/ Pierre “Pitt” Arens is still CEO!
share-your-photo.com/44b65b2519 (from March 2019)
share-your-photo.com/dea542d700 (from today!)
Seems Pablo wasn’t too thrilled to be a part of OneLife and working with Ruja. If he sat any further to his right he wouldn’t have been in the picture.
Seems the stories floating around that Pablo didn’t like Ruja weren’t stories after all based on his body language and his sitting in the picture with Ruja.
I remember OneCoin’s PR consultant protesting that Pablo’s car accident was real on this website:
https://behindmlm.com/companies/onecoin/macau-police-fail-to-prevent-onecoin-event-gerlach-report-fake-news/#comment-381965
“Terence Saunders” is Chelgate CEO: chelgate.com/senior-team/terence-fane-saunders/
He’s not very good at covering his tracks!
Heh, I wonder how much OneCoin paid to Chelgate and what Chelgate did for them?
Unfortunately for OneCoin, there’s no PR consultancy in the whole Universe that could magically fix OneCoin’s catastrophic reputation for the better.
Pitt Arens seems to be back in Luxembourg in his small business as investment banker finacorp.lu/fc/about-us.html
He made all mentions of onecoin vanish from his online profile, except for the fact that he was managing an international company in Dubai…
OneCoin – a behind the scenes reveal with critics and Duncan Arthur & his team, Webinar 29th July 2019.
Disclaimer: The OneCoin critics on this webinar are not affiliated nor do we endorse in any way byCoi and/or other projects discussed in this webinar. This webinar on our part is strictly about onecoin and we ask anyone to do their own due diligence.
Webinar publishing was approved by both parties.
Debaters:
OneCoin critics: Jen McAdam, Lynndel “Lynn” Edgington, Tim “Tayshun” Curry, Jon Walsh
Duncan Arthur’s team: Duncan Arthur, Jan-Eric Nyman, Gary Gilford, Dorothee Rubman, Lloyd Moor
youtu.be/OIAE0cC14zY
Here are my messy notes on the long video, covering hopefully most of the interesting points:
– Duncan was hired by Ruja in late 2016. Horrifed initially after googling her, but “she sold me the vision, brought me into the bubble”. She regretted the hiring immediately, tried to fire D “almost weekly”. Only his friendship with Konstantin saved him.
– DS became D’s sole focus when it stared in Feb 2017 but he not was in charge of it ; 2018 he was only one left, was told to fix it. -> He got in touch with Jan-Eric
(What was D role with the old DS since it became his sole focus from 2017?)
– Initially, D didn’t have a proper job title. Ruja hired D as “a consultant”. London office ran errands around London for Ruja; they were translating, fixing English in official communications?, drive IPO ([“on day two I thought it was impossible…”?], manage her London properties, tried to reach out central banks to teach them about crypto (–> the crazy Tanzania incident was brought up later in the webinar), – D’s first network event in May 2018.
– D reson for poor DD: “OneCoin is a cult. There is limited information. Once you get into that bubble, you believe everything that was told to you.”
– Painting a picture of lving in different universes: Duncan’s London office a separate corporate structure, and self-funded right from the start. Operated in parallel with Sofia, London being the “satellite office”. London had no access to the Sofia systems. Didn’t get any money from Sofia; people there never employed by Sofia. “We were fed what we were being fed. We did not support the coin. We did not support the network. We did not go to the events — we ran errands.” (prior to mid 2018?) D: “We were paid stupid.”
– Bycoi a “Noah’s ark”/ life boat for OneCoin victims. Herbalife “turnaround” as an example. (?) J-E (54:55) “Either we leave this and forget about it, or save these people somehow”. J-E implies that since they got 150 K euros in debts from the money DS users “used” from their cash accounts, they needed to give them a real platform; J-E: “In order for us to pay that out, well, what can we do? Are we gonna ask them for money, or are we gonna give a real solution, a real cryprocurrency –> the real reason/motive for Bycoi is to cover their cost and the debts they made in their OneLife saga?
– Lloyd asked Duncan is there a blockchain and D replied “yes, I’ve seen it” (???, because contradicts D’s “late awakening” story) 24:30 ->
– J-E lives in Marbella, has 28 year background in MLM, ACN etc. Was asked to do cashback programme for OPN. Met Ruja (in Wales?), got bad feeling, didn’t know what she was talking about, centralized mining pools didn’t make sense, stayed in the background “couple of yers” until Duncan called (supposedly in May 2018). “They gave me some trader packs, so I had some coins”
– May 2018 J-E’s contract with OneCoin related company (which doesn’t exist anymore) has a clause about access to the APIs.
– J-E has Indian team (BigStep Technologies?)+ dealings with “Russian hackers”
– Asked Krum Angelov about APIs. In Mid August 2018 got to talk with Sodia IT team, “Stanislav something”, who started in June, took over from “Momchi” (–> From early 2018 to June 2018, there was nobody to replace Momchi?). In end of August 2018 J-E got the entire source code, (“4 terabyte dropbox link”). Asked his Russian IT guru (who he works with in “other projcts”) to analyze the code. For two months the Russian dug into the code, to undestand how it works, only to reach the conlusion that it was a closed to system, that “I cannot do anything without any real a access to their system.” Despite pleadings for access (also from K), they never got the access. In mid November, when the pressure to launch the new DS had muounted (was promised in around September), Sofia “suddenly” sent them entire user database of OneLife, “every single person who holds coin, whatever they had in their cash accounts”
– the databaase indicated that there was 14,5 million euros in the user cash accounts. Got scared about the fact, for it had to backed somehow, if someone uses their money “that doesn’t even exist”. For the newDS a separate entity in Ireland was established. Instigated by K through D,
– In January 2019 J-E had “final statement” in his head that Onecoin doesn’t have a BC because they don’t give APIs or access. But they gave access to their test servers, and J-E’s guys started to build interfaces. Only thing that managed to do is was to build “an intermedia[ry] service” to sign up people in OneLife. Said to D that this is bad, they don’t have a BC, but cannot prove it.
– When K was arrested in March, they got nobody in Sofia to speak on their behalf. They still had access to the code repositories storage in Atlassian, they saw everyhting they were doing.
– J-E has some screenshots from Atlassian, one in which “BC script has three lines of code”)
– 150 000 euros worth of money had been used from newDS cash accounts. They never got the money from Sofia. Indicates that their high fees in Bycoi are in part to cover that cost.
– In late April, they suddenly got email from Sofia asking to let their guys in to the newDS system in order to connect it to the blockchain. He asked his guy Alex to go into the Atlassian to see if there is any new code commits, and there indeed was. J-E: “This is just rubbish. They had made something to look like an exchange, with mySQL database moving numbers back and forth. Because the database we got was obviously not a BC – it was a database, mySQL database,” ; “Of course it is a BC simulator!”
– Refused to let Sofia guys into their systems and sign offered confidentiality agreement.
– Momchil Angelov(?) set up the original “OneLife system”. “He destroyed the repository code strotage”, because of he was the IT boss and could do it. “He’s dead”, litarally or figuratively. J-E, perhaps joking: “No one has seen him since. We think Bulgarian mafia has…”. No back-ups for the code that got deleted (after?) Sofia office raid 2018.
– J-E: “I had my bad feeling, which I obviosly conveyd both to D and him to K, but at the same time, I was not a believer in that, the believers in the office and other were the believers — they thought it was existing”
– Impossible to simulate BC back in time. Sofia probably tries to do some kind of simulation
– OneLife members own 65 billion coins, according to this OneLife. The database that they got indicates that OL members own “almost 50 billion”.
– J-E thinks OneLife is funded by some lawyer who controls some trusts.
– OneCoin Ltd never wrote cheks to anyone, as far as they know.
– RavenR Capital Limited. (Gary Gilford, the director, a private equity lawyer.) Had consulting relationship with OneLife/One Network Services Ltd, gave/facilitated legal advices for them. But RavenR was really set up to be a “family office to private equity structures”. Consultants were setting up funds for “either Ruja or some member of her family”. Which actually never happened, accding to Gary, because they couldn’t get “clear money” for the funds.
– RavenR has a lease of OneLife London premises. Debt problems related to that because Ruja has disappeared and nobody willing to pay.
– RavenR Dubai is the shareholder of Ravenr Capital. Gary never met the shareholders, only took instructions from Ruja or her family members.
– Major factor in giving comfort to Gary to carry on relationship with OneCoin: A top tier London law firm (not Carter-Ruck), with serious financial services team, spent six months going over Sofia office, went there + interviewed people, and couldn’t find anything wrong – “there were no red flags”. Although they gave Sofia issues to correct, they concluded that it was not a pyramid scheme. J-E responds to Gary saying that it means nothing; easy to get a positive legal opinion for MLM compensation plan.
– Steinkeller bros Carribean mafia rumour.
– Weekly Exchange updates fake/laughable per D. He has been setting up a crypto exchange, and doesn’t know what they are talking about. Bad English indicates it’s Veselina who is writing them.
– D has reporterd “everything” to the FCA.
– Gary Gilford(2:20 timemark) due to meet Ruja October 17th, but she disapperead overnihght ,
“I was told she was dead. Less than year ago, I had very convincing guy sitting in meeting with me, with a another law firm we were useing. He forced tears to come out of his eyes, and told us he believed she was dead. He tried to find her. She was last seen getting into a Porsche(?), in Thessalonika airport, with five big Croatian men, or Bosnian men. That was apparently last time anyone had seen her.”
“Konstantin said to me there were three people who knew where Ruja was. He could not tell me where she was. Three people knew, and he was one of them. I believed he was in contact with her, emailing her. He may meet her. I have no reason no to doubt that he believed he was talking to Ruja. I don’t know that he was.”
– DOJ referenced document giving K authority to Ruja’s property and affairs may be fake. Would have helped Gary and D if K could have sold the problematic London properties.
– D says it’s unverified, but Sofia is currently paid by the Master Distributors. If the exchange is going to happen, it’s going to be funded by the networkers. Sofia in serious finacial trouble.
– Frank Schneider. Checked Ruja’s certificates and claimed OC genuine. PR firm representative.
– About two weeks after October 17 th. Pierre had gone to Sofia because of the rumour that Ruja was missing. Zafar’s trip to Sofia coincided with Pitt’s trip. Zafar’s posse wanted to continue the perception that everything was normal. Pierre was nervous, and was proabably on the brink of leaving anyway (from July or August was already thinking about leaving, per Dorothee), Zafar’s thugs gave Pierre Arens a beating, they roughed him up and forced him to do a video where Pitt convinced that everything is fine. Arens allegedly suffered heart attacks as a result of the beating.
– Pablo Munoz is back in Miami. He got nervous and leaved, [because of dealings with regulators? Had trouble with Irina Dilkinska?]
– Irina Dilkinska. Gary and Irina had difficult relationship. London didn’t follow Sofia’s instructions. In late 2018, Konstantin fired Irina and put Gary in her place. She was fired because she tried to steal 192 million dollars. “Her and Scott fucked it up”(Duncan), and D implied the episode possibly lead to the arrest of Scott.
– When Ruja was working for McKinsey she got introduced to lot of important people in Bulgaria.
– Duncan writing a book on OneCoin. Money goes to the victims.
– Duncan doesn’t leave his house without bodyguards
– Question about Ruja being a puppet not resolved; Gary had also tried to the find the answer but to no avail.
– Konstantin protected Duncan being fired. K is “not that bright”. “Whatever his sister did, he didn’t understand, he was just there to take the fault.” Earlier(18:45) D: “Either K comes out gets convicted, other way, he tells me ‘you were right’, because we were trying to fix things. He is very different person from his sister. There is a case to answer — How much of is Konstantin’s I’m not quite sure.”
– Lloyd counterpoint: Unverified reports say that Konstantin has personal fortune of 200 million. Might be an incentive to keep “the ship afloat”-
– In LA, FBI asked D “Where’s Ruja”, “Who is X, Y”, “How is the coin priced”, “Where are the mining centers” — D Couldn’t answer the questions. The Feds said D was a moron. D claims didn’t know anything about the network etc., was a just a “nice guy” running DS. As he was boarding a plane to Istanbul, the Feds gave him an order to appear before grand jury in SDNY, in 5-6 hours, which was physically impossible to get there in the time given. When he pointed that out to the agents, they said to him he is never welcome in USA again. Suspects that undercover FBI agent was sitting next to him during his flight back home; he avoided his questions by pretending to fall asleep.
As soon he could, D went to Sofia; asked same questions the FBI had had asked him, but could’t get any answers. That “burst every fucking bubble” for D. D’s relationship with Sofia soured. The experience prompted D to ask Jan-Eric investigate questions regarding legitimacy of their tech –> alleged starting point to process that lead to the “no blockchain” report.
– during D’s Japan trip, rumours were flying that D might get arrested. Sofia said it would be fine, because then there’d be one less problem.
– After Japan trip(early April), J-E soon approached D and had conluded that there is no blockchain, “no nothing”.
– J-E “managed to hack the system”. Sent (the now leaked) report to Sofia with offer to save/fix the whole mess. But Sofia didn’t take the offer and abandoned/fired D.
– BMW auction. D arrived late at the Romanian DS expo. “None of the merchants were selling anything by DS”. D said to Romanin leader, Cristi Calina, he’s gotta put a limit on the BMW deal, but he refused. Whole time D tried to shut the auction down. D immediately phoned Sofia that the auction had happened which completely invalidates the value of the coin. Next day Calina tried to bribe D with chocolates, flowers and champagne to make the auction acceptable to Konstantin. Konstatin was outraged.
– D or Gary doesn’t know what K’s “look what happened to those who messed up with my sister” threat made against IC members related to the auction refers to.
– Cristi Calina hired a Romanian prostitute to D’s Croatian trip in an attempt to create blackmail material about D.
Well, that much about the superb information security the Ponzi pimps have been bragging about.
This is interesting as it is in line with the DOJ documents, except that the exact way of disappearing at the airport is not mentioned by DOJ docs.
Would be interesting to know if the feds have this same info about the manner in which Ruja disappeared?
@Otto I read the gossip or fact as well that she dissapeared into a Porsche with 5 Croatian men. Don’t know however 6 people fit into a Porsche. So funny all these stories.
If they did send the entire database with Coin holders I sure hope they also send the database with payouts as today the coinholders database will not bring them back to much clawback money.
They could all play the victims if you have no proof of them cashing in money.
I was going to comment on the Porsche thing too but then I remembered they make SUVs.
porsche.com/uk/models/cayenne/cayenne-models/cayenne-s/
Well probably 4 in the back seat is not very comfortable but in a car as large as that it can be done.
Ruja Ignatova already drove a Porsche when she was cheating in Germany. She did not pay for that but had it financed.
share-your-photo.com/aeecd22d06
Also with this procedure everyone can recognize the lousy character of this woman! The Porsche was more important to her than the employees of her company.
Source: benecker.com/2017/11/19/onecoin-queen-fr-dr-ruja-ignatova-mit-14-monaten-auf-bewaehrung-vorbestraft/
Hey guys, bit of feedback;
Is it worth me going through the webinar video? Semjon seems to have done a bang up job in #17.
I’m feeling better (this cough can fuck right off though) and am just catching up since the weekend. This is one of the few items left I had earmarked for review before I’m up to date again with the news.
I watched the whole video before I read Semjon’s excellent summary (thanks for that).
You will not learn much more by watching the complete video.
Duncan’s report about what happened at the San Francisco and LA airports is entertaining.
youtu.be/OIAE0cC14zY?t=9985
Do I really need to say it?
Two in the front, three in the back, one in a duffel bag in the boot.
Ignatova ceased to have any value as an asset once OneCoin had taken on a life of its own.
And she was much better at promoting the scheme as a quasi-mythical mother figure, than as a living breathing scammer who revealed her ignorance of cryptocurrency every time she opened her mouth and couldn’t pronounce “gen-ee-sis”.
Drunken Duncan’s writing a book on OneCoin with proceeds to the victims? I’ll believe that when I see it.
If he’s a really good writer (unlikely) and gets lucky, it might sell a few hundred thousand copies like The Wolf of Wall Street, but a few million from writing a book won’t go far across hundreds of thousands of OneCoin investors.
It’s an interesting webinar, for sure. I think it’s value is mostly in providing good leads for further stories, because it, understandably, only scratches the surface on most of interesting issues it brought up.
The subjects that get a little more detailed attention, like “the newDS development/no blockchain” issue, we mostly already knew from the leaked report.
Quite a bit of it is crypto tech talk about Bycoi which I didn’t inlcude in my notes, and Jan-Eric provides his detailed explanation about his role in OPN/Unaico/Sitatalk MLM, which too I didn’t include in my notes.
I recommend to watch it, because there is lots of stuff that I probably missed or mis-interpreted in my notes.
For example, now that I re-watch some parts of it, I probably should have included the fact that — just like Momchi and Ruja — Irina Dilkinska is now also missing (Duncan says that she has a wolf named “Chunky”, so I think it’s quite possible that she has been eaten by wolves, perhaps with the aid of Bulgarian mafia 🙂 ); and that Duncan claims that the first time he heard about gift codes was when FBI asked him about it, and when he investigated the issue after the FBI interrogation, he discovered that gift codes are essentially a money laundering tool.
Good for Duncan that FBI forced him to finally do some proper Due Diligence. 🙂
Which leads me to the central issue, that is to assess how credible is the overall story that the Team Duncan try to tell us, and, to lesser extent, what to think about their Bycoi project.
I think what they tell about their relationship with OneCoin can been seen at least somewhat plausible, but, for me, no matter how much I would like to give them the benefit of a doubt, it ultimately strains credulity.
To quote the FBI agents, can Duncan really be that “fucking moron”? After the Sofia raid, after the news about Mark S Scott proceedings, after the all kinds of shadiness he personally witnessed (like some of things he told us about) and what had been reported in media — he just couldn’t look around a little bit and put the readily available pieces together until FBI woke him up?
Is the cult bubble + late in the scene + distance/distinctness from Sofia (which I have my doubts, btw) + legal opinion from fancy London law firm really enough to create the kind of “reality distortion” to not see what’s really going on?
The way that it makes a little bit more sense to me, is to see the London office people as certain type of life form — a life form that Mark S Scott, for example, represents.
It’s telling that like Gary Gilford, Mark Scott was also setting up “Family Office” private equity funds for OneCoin criminal proceeds (see DOJ Scott Search Warrant document page 21 , where the term “Family Office” appears).
These are the the figures who operate in grey and dark areas of the financial services/banking world, where everything is always more or less dodgy. It’s the world of Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Danske Bank scandal, and it always has some overlap between criminal underworld.
They are willing to be the devil’s advocate, devil’s banker and devil’s book cooker if the devil has pockets deep enough. They are the people who can be, as Duncan puts it, “paid stupid” — they don’t ask too many questions and can “carry out errands” with willful or professional-instinctual ignorance of any broader contexts.
But I don’t know… If they really are sincere with Bycoi and they can do something to help the true OneCoin victims with it (+ co-operating with authorities), I wish them luck. They truly need to make some kind of strong atonement for their former pivotal role in facilitating OneCoin fraud which has caused untold pain and misery, including suicides.
The damage is more direct and tangible in comparison to what their colleagues in London do when they accept, e.g. dirty money from Russian oligarchs.
@ Malthusian
You’re not naive enough to think that Duncan will write the book himself are you? It’s not like Nick Leeson, nor Jordan Belfort wrote their own books.
Whatever Arthur raises is something. At the moment there is nothing
Bycoi as a “get some money back” plan is sheer stupidity. Duncan plans to generate 120 billion BYC out of thin air (the easy part), hand those to OneCoin investors for €30/investor (the difficult part) and then expects the merchants to accept BYC for some sensible value (the impossible part).
So a merchant receives BYC and wants to sell them for the face value. Who would buy them?
The Pakistani guy who was selling his 6 million OneCoin account gets 6 million BYC for €30 – quite a bargain!
For what price do you think he is willing to sell those BYC? The 29.85 EUR/coin that OneCoins are claimed to be worth? 0.01 EUR/BYC?
He got those coins for less than 0.0000075 EUR/BYC – he can sell BYC for one thousandth of a cent per coin and STILL make profit!
As long as he is selling his BYC, nobody will buy BYC from a single merchant. Fact.
Don’t get me wrong – some people will probably get goods worth more than the €30 they spent, but that profit will be scammed from the pockets of the merchants.
Only one who makes money in this is Duncan. If he gets 40 000 OneCoin victims to enlist for €30 each, he will make 1.2 million euros of pure profit. Not bad.
@Otto You really have missed the plot and shouldn’t comment if you have missed the bigger picture.
The one-for-one match is only legally possible and available until Arthur’s coin goes on an exchange. That apparently happens soon.
Even if the value of a BYC is a hundredth or less of a cent, it is still more than the completely artificial value designated to a “OneCoin”.
If you have some insight into Duncan’s costs, please share it.
Where do you get “selling” from? Pay more attention to what is going on and your grammar.
Imo Duncan should have dropped some fixed amount of ByCoi to Onecoin members, that would have made more sense.
I don’t see this as a fair start for a new coin, even when there will be sell limits implemented.
Although that guy with 6 million onecoins/bycois will probably want some of his original investment back, so wouldn’t make sense for him to sell for 0.0000075.
But anyway, I’m very skeptical towards this Duncan’s scheme. We will see how it goes.
I don’t think I have missed the plot, I’m just looking it deeper than the surface. Besides, I definitely should comment if it makes me catch something I have missed. But what comes to “the big picture”…
I have heard the “missed the bigger picture” so many times as a statement that tries to explain why some scheme will not follow the basic rules of supply and demand. I sincerely hope this is not just one more of those times.
Legally? I’m only following the marketing email that explained that paying the 30 euro fee will be “Allocating the equivalent amount of ByCoi in your wallet as you have in OneCoin – Your OneCoin is unaffected“.
What legal issue is there? People will be given free coins, nothing is taken in exchange (except the 30 euros).
We certainly can agree that any non-zero number is higher than the Onecoin value. I’m just pointing out that for this Bycoi coin the value should be set by supply and demand.
And unfortunately there is very little (if any) demand but a very large supply. That calls for a very low price, like I pointed out before.
What comes to Duncan’s costs the marketing email said that this 30 euro cost will cover:
– KYC by an independent external company
– Allocating the equivalent amount of ByCoi in your wallet as you have in OneCoin – Your OneCoin is unaffected
– If you have a ByCoi balance you trade on OVID.ie (once you have registered as a merchant)
I sure hope Duncan Arthur is in this with all good intentions and uses those money for something that brings value to the victims. But he will be receiving that money and it is up to his goodwill what he uses them for.
You said it yourself that there is an exchange coming soon. If you can’t sell the coins there, what is the exchange then for?
Sorry about my grammar, I’m not a native English speaker.
You’re right. He has paid some 300,000-350,000 euros for those coins so he’ll be selling them for around 0.06 euros apiece – at least for starters.
Ironically, if the promise for the 1:1 compensation from ONE to BYC holds, people could actually buy Onecoins and then convert them to Bycoi’s.
That means the Bycoi’s can be obtained for the price of OneCoin (the buying price via “educational packages”), which I think comes close to 0.08 euros / OneCoin for larger packages.
That’ll be the maximum price anyone would pay for one BYC since after that it’s cheaper to just buy ONE via OneLife network and convert them to BYC.
@Otto: Arthur “f’king moron” he apparently is, isn’t selling coins. He’s shrewd, he’s a lawyer and knows that “selling” coins is regulated and makes it a security in many places.
“Match a coin”, easy. Only that is only possible before bycoi becomes exchangeable. Then the price is out of Arthur-moron’s hands.
Stay tuned, he knows every scam coin is going to go Titanic, he knows the people, he probably cynically planned this.
There’ll be a rush to bycoi whn OL tanks, Dag, etc. Do you have any inside knowledge on Arthur’s costs for KYC, watchlist checks, servers, etc? Any idea how many people have “mirrored”?
It’s probably not The Official Party Line from Sofia’s Politburo but in a QA sessions of a recent OneLife IMA webinar, Dusan Torbica tells members to forget the newDealShaker, it was never connected to the blockchain to begin with, all transactions made there were illusory and therefore no coins were lost, as the members can see from their OneLife BackOffice (really?):
youtu.be/v5BfmJtzCLQ?t=6007
For all remaining OneCoin dimwits, it must be reassuring to know that “the Company”, along with its top leaders, including Konstantin, can for months hype and promote completely fake and illusory platform. But creating something illusory is in line with OneCoin traditions, as everyone can read from the DOJ documents.
They shouldn’t expect anything less from the upcoming Exchange with THE Central Bank (of Narnia), as the post-modernist weekly updates suggest.
Also, when asked, Dusan Torbica says he doesn’t know who is the current CEO. He doesn’t even want the members to know the name of the current de facto leader of “the Company”, namely Veselina Marinova Valkova.
OneCoin is such a serious company that no doubt there is a legitimate reason for all the murkiness.
For all we know, it could be something like: The Company wants to hide Veselina so that she can concentrate on Harry Potter cosplay competitions as she is competing to win as Bellatrix Lestrange.
Spotted a rumour that Ruja Ignatova lives in Varna(Bulgaria) under a dead person’s identity:
(machine translation from: liberta.bg/григир-лилов-хакерската-атака-срещу-нап-е-особено-нагъл-шантаж-от-засега-ананомни-лица-или-структура)
The only problem with Ignatova still hiding out in Bulgaria though is that Bulgaria has an extradition treaty with the US.
Yes, but it might be not that big of a problem for several reasons.
If she has a dead person’s identity then, technically, there is no ‘Ruja Ignatova’ to extradite. This coupled with the facts that she has likely made some efforts to change her apparence and the incredible corruptness of Bulgarian authorities, make her hiding in Bulgaria quite possible.
Also, it’s not politically and legally unproblematic for any government to extradite their own citizens even if extradition treaty exists.
Especially when, from European perspective, American criminal justice system is draconian. (No way Ruja would face 85 years prison in Europe — I’d be surprised if any European jurisdiction would give anything close to 10 years even for the most egregious economic crimes imaginable.)
For example, the Government argued against Konstantin’s bail on grounds that Germany along with most foreign countries, don’t extradite their own citizen and that even waivers of extraditions would be unenforceable:
I’d be really surprised if Ruja is in Bulgaria. Firstly, it is cleaning itself up slowly and she’d be low hanging fruit.
Then it’s perfectly miserably cold for eight months of the year, even in Varna. Daylight assassinations still happen in public in Sofia and bodyguards don’t stop bullets.
If that’s possible in an EU capital, what makes Plovdiv or Varna or Nessebar remotely safe?
Bulgaria also has wild political swings. Either the former communists are in total power or the former fascists, always the mafia. You bet on the wrong side and they will screw you over.
This recent video made against “OneCoin haterz”(featuring Tim, CryptoExpose, Ari Widell, etc.) could win The World Championship in Stupidity award:
youtube.com/watch?v=m6FAeZYiC9E
Well, according to the often criticized April Fools Day joke (published on April 1, 2017) from CoinTelegraph HERE: cointelegraph.com/news/onecoin-to-be-listed-on-coinmarketcapcom-humbling-ethereum – which indoctrinated #CULT followers embraced as truth and spread like wildfire, there references to “Dr. Ruja Ignatova” (HERE: esq.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/07/54daf94090795_-_esq-scarlet-johansson-2005-01-de.jpg ) may not be so unimaginative as previously feigned.
While a few $100K might help (plastic surgery-wise) in putting lipstick on a proverbial pig, a couple $100M in plastic surgery might help create a facade in which any common pig might appear more convincingly as Scarlett Johansson?
I suspect Rhuzha (insert new multi-cultural spelling of figurehead, as you will) has endeavored drastic plastic surgery on every part of her recognizable body (if she is not wearing cement boots 20,000 leagues under the Black Sea, already).
Ruja was far too megalomanic to just “disappear completely” from social media and aristocracy. She would need to “flaunt” her braggadocio; but could only accomplish this if: A.) still alive; and B.) completely transformed into a new “body.”
Ruja couldn’t live the life of an Osama Bin Laden, in some cave.
She NEEDS (and obviously has the means to pursue) the socialite outlets of donning her stark colored, gaudy doll dresses, “look-at-me” crimson red lipstick, $25K Hermes bags and diamond dripping necklaces which, like the stereotypical gypsy-thief she is, which funded the Cristal Champagne and cocaine fueled parties (IMO)/ orgies (IMO) with fellow “important people and influencers,” which she has always aspired to.
You can take the gypsy out of the caravan, but you can’t take the caravan out of the gypsy.
“The dogs bark, but the caravan must go on – as have always been the ironic axiom of the deceivers, themselves.
@Stev Cowl
If the value of BYC is a hundredth of a cent or more or less, that won’t help OneCoin members as it will solely represent money that OneCoin members have put into BYC in the desperate hope of a bailout.
No-one outside OneCoin is going to hand over money or money’s worth for BYC just so they can bail out some failed wannabe scammers out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only money going onto the BYC table will be from OneCoin victims (and victims of other scams as you suggest) who have been encouraged to put their remaining money into Bycoi in the hope that once it goes to the moon, they can cash out and recover their losses.
A very similar pitch to DealShaker – “support the ecosystem” and hand over even more money or goods for worthless OneCoin and somehow you’ll be able to do the reverse on the 10th of never.
Strip away the crypto-speak and this is a straightforward fraud recovery fraud play, aka a follow-on scam.
@ Malthusian
That’s like just your opinion, man. Anything is better than nothing and nobody is putting a gun to anyone’s head.
In a year if this turns out to not be a “follow-on scam” with perfect hindsight, will you apologize?
Duncan Arthur sees fit to comment on it:
I’m no Malthusian but I made previously another comment with almost 100% same reasoning and conclusions so I’m all go for it.
I’m marking August 19th 2020 to my calendar and I’ll come back to this thread within a year. (Probably sooner if the Ovid/Bycoi will sooner turn out to be the dud it is doomed to be.)
If the Ovid/Bycoi manages to launch before one year is over, we should be very well capable of telling whether or not it was able to produce any value for the current victims of OneCoin.
Can we all three agree on these few topics?
1. The Ovid/Bycoi produced no value if the Bycoi is worthless (or close to worthless).
2. The Bycoi coin can be considered “close to worthless” (instead of worthless) if selling the Bycois would not return more than the 30€ fee for most of the owners of the coin.
3. The Bycoi Coin can be considered worthless if both of the criterias below are met:
3a. You can’t buy anything that has a real world value with Bycoi’s. *)
3b. There isn’t a working exchange where Bycoi’s can be exchanged to a fiat currency (or to some publicly traded cryptocurrency that can be exchanged to a fiat currency).
4. There isn’t a working exchange if the only exchange available is “an internal exchange” where coins can only be cashed out from the subsequent investments of new members (like OneCoin “xcoinx” or DagCoin “successfactory”).
In case of Bycoi I think it would imply that “sales” of coins were paid from the 30 euro registration fees, or some kind of a sign-up payment of a merchant (if anything like that will be introduced).
*) = See current Dealshaker for list of examples where the coin is supposed to have value but in fact it does not:
– “buy a coupon that gives you 20% off from the price” (the seller could sell it for that much less were there OneCoins or not)
– “pay half of the price in OneCoins and half of the price in euros” (where the euro part of the price itself would cover the price of the goods)
– “Available as soon as the exchange opens” (it never does)
– “100% in OneCoins” (except that an illogically large “service fee” and all of the shipping are paid in euros)
– etc.
I’m all open for suggestions if there are additional points of evaluation I missed.
Basic math and the commonly known rules of supply and demand are not matters of opinion.
Yeah I couldn’t get through that video.
Point of interest: If you look at the Twitter trends it’s someone from EU/UK. My guess would be one of the Indian/Pakistanis living in the UK crowd.
Also explains why they used speech2text with broken English.
Edit: Nah it’s someone from France. The YouTube subscribe button comes up as “SABONNER”.
GG French OneCoin scammers. You played yourself (but thanks for the laughs).
Seriously though, if you’re going to release garbage like that – at least do it in your native tongue.
Who is the video for?
robot voice: Hur dur, some people are connected on Twitter. George Soros confirmed.
Any native-English speaker is just going to cringe at embarrassing content like that.
If I’m not mistaken, Curry Hater from Igor’s blog is French. His brother is a French National Police officer, so the presumption is he would be too. I’m sure all the believers know who made the video, and of course is being heralded as being brilliant and did a fantastic job.
This video concept and the need to send it to the DOJ, US Attorneys, etc. is from Page 40 of the Ponzi Playbook. Never has worked and won’t work this time either; but FUNNY.
ByCoi is another me-too altcoin. Fact.
Even if there are still people looking to hand over real money for altcoins, they’re not going to lose (even more) money by choosing an altcoin that is carrying the weight of liabilities of salty failed OneCoin scammers. Fact.
Meaningless truism. The point is that OneCoin victims will chuck away further money on ByCoi in an attempt to recover their OneCoin losses, leaving them with less than nothing.
No duh Stev, that’s how scamming usually works. If you put a gun to someone’s head it’s not scamming, it’s robbery.
Malthusian … (# 40) who said OL members are giving ByCoi their coins in exchange – please check your facts first!
@Chandra: It’s not my fraud recovery fraud so I don’t know why you’re addressing that at me.
I can’t see that I said that OL members are giving ByCoi their coins. But it makes zero difference whether OL members have to hand over OneCoin for ByCoi or OL members get ByCoi for free.
Either way they get ByCoi for free as OneCoin is worse than worthless.
Stev asserts that if OneCoin victims are handed ByCois which are then traded for even a tiny value, this will help OneCoin victims.
I have pointed out that it won’t because that tiny value will represent real money put in by desperate OneCoin investors hoping they can cash out even more later.
If OneCoin victims do not put any more real money into ByCoi, ByCoi will be worthless.
Nobody else is going to hand over real money or money’s worth in exchange for ByCoi so they can bail out failed scammers.
It may help an individual OneCoin investor in the extremely unlikely event they manage to cash out ByCoi for more than they put in, but that doesn’t help OneCoin investors as a group.
A year has passed and here we are! I think I said something about getting back to this:
So…
1. The “new dealshaker”, a.k.a. “ovid” was closed and rerouting to bycoi.ie, which has then disappeared from the web.
It seems that NOLINK://https://explorer.bycoi.io shows still the bycoi blockchain explorer, but the last block mined is from April this year, as is the last transaction. A blockchain that hasn’t received new blocks in 4 months is D-E-A-D.
2. 3. 4. -> No blockchain, no way to move or use coins, no value. Bycois are worthless, if anyone ever managed to obtain any.
@Stev Cowl
Do want to admit you were wrong?
I didn’t set myself a reminder but just randomly came across this thread again.
I’m happy if Stev doesn’t want to admit he was wrong, because I already knew a year ago I was right and I don’t need anyone to tell me that 2 + 2 still = 5. Hah!
The German journalist Martin Himmelheber informed me that the photo in my comment #7 is no longer available. Which scammer deleted it? Pablo Munoz or Aron Steinkeller? Here is the deleted photo again:
share-your-photo.com/7543d19129