When Italy’s Antitrust and Consumer Protection Authority (AGCM) banned promotion of OneCoin last year, OneCoin responded with pseudo-compliance nonsense.

Not surprisingly, the AGCM took no notice and pressed ahead with their investigation. Eventually declaring OneCoin to be a “deceitful Ponzi scheme”, banning the company outright and last week, slapping it with a €2.5 million euro fine.

Unlike Ruja Ignatova’s criminal charges in India, extensive media coverage has left OneCoin unable to ignore the AGCM’s pyramid scheme fine.

Despite the AGCM banning OneCoin showing that they weren’t interested in pseudo-compliance, OneCoin’s answer to the pyramid scheme fine is more of the same.

In Ponzi lala land OneCoin has nothing to do with MLM. The MLM side of the business is operated through OneLife, which OneCoin claims it has nothing to do with.

In reality OneCoin consists of a shell company network (including OneLife), which was progressively set up to avoid regulators and launder incoming funds from all over the world.

The company operates a pyramid scheme by paying investors to recruit new investors, which is done through an MLM compensation plan.

On top of that you’ve got the OneCoin Ponzi points fraud, which sees investors investing in OneCoin points.

The only way to obtain OneCoin points is to invest with OneCoin or pay money to an existing investor who will then transfer you OneCoin points from their own balance, through their OneCoin affiliate backoffice.

Bear in mind this still requires signing up as a OneCoin affiliate. There is no way to obtain OneCoin points without going through the company.

To their credit, the AGCM’s investigation into OneCoin was based on reality and not a Ponzi lala land fantasy – which makes OneCoin’s response all the more comical.

In an August 11th response, OneCoin claims

1. OneCoin is NOT an MLM company, nor has anything that could be related to pyramid sales, since it is exclusively engaged in maintenance and development of the technical aspects of the OneCoin cryptocurrency.

It does not perform any sort of network marketing activity.

This fact has been properly communicated with the authority, however neglected.

As above, the reality is that OneCoin is made up of too many shell companies to count.

Under this umbrella, the company very much runs an MLM opportunity, through which it conducts pyramid fraud.

And the OneCoin cryptocurrency doesn’t exist. Rather the company doles out points, which have no value outside of OneCoin itself.

Is it any wonder the AGCM “neglected” OneCoin’s pseudo-compliance nonsense?

Evidently they were only interested in the facts.

2. The websites listed in the press release, together with another company, named Easy Life S.r.l., are NOT and were NEVER part of OneCoin and/or OneLife.

In relation to the websites listed by the authority, the latter was duly informed that the websites in question were not owned, maintained or in any other way controlled by the companies.

However, the companies have undertaken immediately all reasonably measures for removal of the websites and currently these are not active.

This fact has also been properly communicated with the authority, however also neglected.

An answer to a question nobody asked?

The websites in question were obviously owned by OneCoin affiliates in Italy. At no point in time did the AGCM explicitly state they were operated by OneCoin.

The websites were first referenced in the initial promotional ban (December, 2016), as they were the first port of call for the regulatory investigation (local promotion).

By law the websites had to stop promoting OneCoin, which itself was explicitly banned by the authority (a fact OneCoin ignores).

And it should be noted that the AGCM’s ban was never just about removing a couple of websites. These were cited as primary examples of promotion of OneCoin in Italy.

The issue was and always has been the promotion of the OneCoin Ponzi scheme in Italy. How this took place is what OneCoin are disputing, which is ultimately neither here nor there.

3. One Network Services Ltd. has NEVER performed any activities related to any of the statements, made in the press release and specifically network marketing activity.

It is an independent third party that is NOT a subsidiary to OneCoin nor to OneLife.

This fact has also been properly communicated with the authority, however also neglected.

Once again I have to point out that any investigation into OneCoin will inevitably slice through the pseudo-compliance and conclude that OneCoin and any of its related shell companies are in fact all the same company, operated by the same people.

So while OneCoin can carry on about one of their companies not being this or that, ultimately regulators will going to ignore the pseudo-compliance and treat the company as a single entity.

4. According to the press release the OneCoin cryptocurrency – ONE, could be obtained by acquiring a training package, which is NOT correct.

As it was also explained to the Authority, OneCoin cryptocurrency coins are mined, not sold by the company.

Know anybody who has OneCoin Ponzi points that weren’t initially obtained through OneCoin and given to an affiliate who paid the company cash?

Yeah, I don’t either.

Even with the gift codes, the points transferred between existing and new affiliates were originally delivered by OneCoin to the existing affiliate in exchange for cash.

OneCoin are the sole issuer of OneCoin Ponzi points, and you can only obtain them from the source by signing up as a OneCoin affiliate and investing in one of their packages.

The rest of OneCoin’s press-release are a series of threats against the AGCM, it’s safe to assume will be ignored (much like their previous threats).

But then this response was never really about challenging the AGCM’s pyramid scheme decision and fine.

Rather such press-releases are pushed out so that OneCoin affiliates in other jurisdiction have something to post on Facebook when the people they’ve scammed want answers.

That’s all OneCoin’s nonsensical response is really about. Meanwhile in the real world Italy has declared OneCoin to be a Ponzi scheme with pyramid fraud and fined them €2.5 million euros.

Which country will be next?