Four more affiliates booked in Indian OneCoin Ponzi case
Authorities in Navi, Mumbai continue to investigate OneCoin, following the arrest of eighteen affiliates last Sunday.
The latest has seen police book four more OneCoin affiliates, who they believe hold “senior positions in OneCoin”.
Interrogation of the previously arrested eighteen affiliates meanwhile has revealed insight into OneCoin’s local Indian operations.
Following the payment, investors were given passwords to access their profiles on the OneCoin website.
On the website, investors could see how many coins they had purchased with their money.
From the sounds of it, local OneCoin scammers were creating accounts for those that invested. They’d then transfer OneCoins from their own accounts.
This effectively allows them to cash out their OneCoin balances, seeing as OneCoin itself suspended withdrawals back in January.
The accused had told the investors that the value of the coins would fluctuate according to the value of Euro.
Investors were also made to believe that the value of the coins would steadily increase as more and more people joined the multi-level marketing scheme.
That way, each investor would bring in their acquaintances into the scheme believing this would increase their returns.
In December 2018, said the police, the investors were to receive their payout. Until then, the accused told the investors to wait and watch their investment grow steadily on the website.
In contrast to authorities in Europe adopting a “wait and see” approach (eg. Finland), Indian authorities have been quick to identify OneCoin as a Ponzi scheme and take action.
Had we not acted now, there would have been a flood of complaints next year after the investors would have realised that they had been cheated,” said (an) officer.
On the money side of things, OneCoin operated in India much the same as anywhere else – through a bunch of shell companies and bank accounts.
The money they had collected so far was funneled into bank accounts not registered under OneCoin.
We have found four bank accounts registered under the names of other corporations.
The accounts contain large amount of money and we are in the process of freezing them, said an officer.
As the investigation continues, I expect we’ll soon learn the total number of Indian OneCoin victims, losses and balance of seized funds.
In the aftermath of the crackdown, prominent OneCoin investor Tom “Mmkay” McMurrain has cancelled his Indian promotional events.
McMurrain was scheduled to promote OneCoin in the Indian cities of Delhi, Bangalore and Coimbotore from April 28th.
Prior to the arrests on Sunday the corresponding Bizzabo event pages were publicly accessible. They’ve since all been pulled offline.
Indian TV report covering the OneCoin arrests:
(Ozedit: video 404 as of Apr 25, 2020)
Thanks Tim.
the commissioners press statement mostly covers everything covered already in the newspaper articles:
an article in mid-day, a popular mumbai daily, reported details of the undercover operation of the mumbai police:
mid-day.com/articles/crime-news-top-cops-go-undercover-to-bust-pyramid-scheme-in-navi-mumbai/18195179
This is extremely clever and devious!
@Anjali-
If those numbers are true than Onecoin may have just authorized increased commissions in certain areas knowing that things are beginning to collapse and hoping to motivate the lemmings to pump even harder for their last stage of pillaging (although it could just be a misquote).
This crap has been going on since the Zeek Rewards days (2011). Every Ponzi points variation has some form of internal points “code” type system in it.
this ^^ implies that the police has been investigating onecoin at the highest levels for a while now, and had planned this operation well in advance.
looks like it’s going to be an all-india bust of onecoin, and not limited to this particular action in navi mumbai.
onecoin is Over in india. tatabyebye.
the top affiliates who had established the local bank accounts for collecting indian funds will be booked as the chief organizers of onecoin.
ruja ignatova will of course hang them out to dry.
It goes back even further than that.
Back in 2005 Bryan Marsdens’ People in Profit System “PIPS” had its’ own internal “PicPay” system where one dollar of PicPay was supposedly worth one dollar in U.S. currency.
This allowed those at the top and insiders to swap their imaginary PicPay dollars to newbies in exchange for US dollars.
Well there you go. Learn from the people who have been tracking the MLM underbelly longer than I have 😀
India, Thanks a million for acting!
Music to my ears…
Video about the Indian arrests and McMurrain deleting his Indian event pages. Use freely. Oz, if you like, you can embed this to your main story.
Police makes OneCoin arrests in India – Tom McMurrain removes his India event pages
Did I dream this? Isn’t MLM illegal in India?
What a joke.
NOLINK://facebook.com/OneCoinRujaIgnatova/posts/691219027745398
It’s kinda “inbetween”. It’s more enforced in certain provinces than others, and up to how Economic Offense Wing and police chief are eager to take up complaints.
Let’s see, Ken is bragging that he got Tim Tayshun’s FB page taken down, but hasn’t said a word about the 22 OneCoiners arrested in India.
But then getting the Tim Tayshun FB page taken down was a higher priority than explaining how this legal crypto-currency OC got 22 of the promoters of OC arrested in India. Priorities, priorities, priorities don’t you know.
Thanks for posting links to the updates Tim. I know it must be satisfying for you to finally see your work paying off with action by the regulators.
I think the recent news about the 22 OneCoin scammers getting arrested in India is finally sinking in with our favorite Ponzi Pimps like Ken Labine, Sarah and Rob McGee, Kevin Foster and Tom McMurrain.
Now, let’s see how long it takes for their investors to realize they’ve been conned and their money has been used to pay for the “lifestyle” of their upline.
It’s fairly obvious the investigation into OneCoin has been global in scope. The North American regulators have been quietly investigating OneCoin/OneLife and are part of the “global effort” to stop this criminal organization. IMO, the US regulators will be the next “shoe to drop”
MLM companies in india were regulated under the PCMC banning act [prize chit and money circulation] in the past.
now the govt of india, under the ministry of consumer affairs, has released guidelines for the MLM industry which will soon become law. these guidelines have already been forwarded to all the states for adoption.
MLM companies have to register themselves and follow the guidelines.those that don’t will get whacked with the PCMC banning act with additional charges of cheating, money laundering etc.
so, now MLM has been recognized as a legitimate industry and will be regulated by the govt in india under strict guidelines.
onecoin hasn’t registered itself in india [or any other country for that matter] and is clearly running afoul of the guidelines with it’s fake overpriced education ‘product’ and cash investments in fake coins, so the PCMC banning act has been invoked against it.
Since Tom ducked a bullet in India, wouldn’t it be poetic justice at the end of his presentation Sunday in London if the authorities were there undercover and arrested his sorry arse? I know it would warm the cockles of my heart.