Konstantin Ignatov receives time served for OneCoin fraud
Konstantin Ignatov has received time served for his role in OneCoin.
As reported by Matt Lee of Inner City Press, Ignatov will also be subject to two years supervised release and $118,000 in forfeiture.
Ignatov (right) stepped up as OneCoin CEO following the disappearance of his sister and OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova.
Ruja disappeared towards the end of of 2017. Konstantin began his OneCoin career in 2016 as “Head of Administration”. He stepped into the OneCoin CEO role shortly after Ruja disappeared.
Like current puppet CEO Ventsislav Zlatkov, Konstantin is believed to have been beholden to organized crime interests running OneCoin within Bulgaria.
Still, $118,000 in forfeiture seems a bit low. Cooperation aside, Konstantin still headed up a $4 billion Ponzi for over a year.
As Matt Lee asks, “Where is the rest of the money?”
All up Konstantin was detained for 34 months, most of which was spent in a New York apartment under limited home detention.
Sentencing filings aren’t up on Pacer yet but I believe a major contributing factor to Ignatov’s sentence was his ongoing cooperation with US authorities.
Some of that cooperation was problematic but whatever else he helped with must have been significant.
Ignatov’s original guilty plea in 2019 had a witness protection clause. I believe this applied to Konstantin, his girlfriend and their then newborn.
If that clause is still in play, despite Ignatov’s perjury in Mark Scott’s case, we probably won’t see or hear from Konstantin again.
Perhaps awkwardly, Konstantin’s parents Veska and Plamen are still tied up in OneCoin in Bulgaria.
Other than obviously profiting from the Ponzi scheme though, how much actual involvement they have is unclear.
I’ll keep an eye on Konstantin’s case docket. If there’s anything further to add from the sentencing filings I’ll leave an update below.
Update 8th March 2024 – Konstantin Ignatov appears to have been deported from the US earlier today.
So he gets away with it.
36 months, most of it in an apartment, for billions of Euro for your family sounds like a good deal if you’re that way inclined
On the flipside;
-you came in late to OneCoin and missed the “golden era” of scamming (Ruja playing carefree princess, Greenwood’s Thailand sex parties)
-most of the money your family stole was probably appropriated by organized crime interests
-said organized crime interests may or may not want to take you out for squealing
-you’ll probably never see your elderly parents again
-you’re the brother of a criminal on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list, meaning you’re probably going to be closely watched (beyond supervised release) and
-if you get into witness protection, that life is going to be difficult to maintain in any English-speaking country
I’m all for Konstantin getting an actual prison sentence but his particular circumstances are messy.
Yeah. I can’t see him going back to Bulgaria anytime soon especially as he got kidnapped there once supposedly even before he cooperated. Those guys in Sofia must be wondering what he said and hating.
Good thing he knows how to operate a forklift. Sometimes you have to fall back on something.
In his next job interview: “So Mr, um, Smith, how do you explain the five year gap in your CV and why is it exactly that Acme Enterprises in Sofia needed you to move tons of BS?”
On one hand I think he was a key witness in the cases against Mark Scott and Sebastian Greenwood and they were far more instrumental in perpetrating the OneCoin crimes.
On the other hand, he did go to Uganda to steal money from orphanages and poor Africans that sold their only goat to buy a OneCoin package.
Then again he was perhaps also instrumental in justifying the extradition order for that spy guy What’s-His-Name.
He served almost 3 years in detention, which is probably on par with what he would have gotten for being a clueless figurehead in a ponzi scheme, so perhaps things are in balance and everyone got what they deserved within the scope of the law.
He will spend the foreseeable future in a witness protection program, probably somewhere in Butt-fuck nowhere, USA.
I don’t get why the Americans would give him witness protection.
They got everything they can from him and he has no ties to the US. When he perjured himself he became useless in court going forward.
Selling to dirt poor Ugandans is disgusting. Him and Frank Ricketts also went and sold in even poorer Malawi. A lot of people were no doubt looking at that and thinking along the lines of “it can’t be fake if they can live with themselves doing that”
Konstantin is back on social media, which I’m taking means witness protection isn’t happening.
instagram.com/p/C4Km_yxOs20/?hl=en
No idea on potential deportation etc. This is beyond what I know with respect to criminal proceedings.
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wort.lu/wirtschaft/bruder-der-cryptoqueen-wieder-auf-freiem-fuss/9082216.html
Article updated to note Konstantin is back in Bulgaria as per an Instagram post made 5 hours ago.
That should be the last update from me.
Ingeborg Englisch, the wife of former DealShaker Country Manager (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) Werner Englisch from Germany, commented:
Henrique Machado, former OneCoin “Blue Diamond” and DealShaker Country Manager Portugal, commented:
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