Why Mark Scott wants post-arrest OneCoin interview suppressed
After his arrest on suspicion of helping OneCoin launder hundreds of millions of dollars, Mark S. Scott sat down with FBI agents for an interview.
Scott alleges he was denied an attorney during the interview. He’s subsequently asked the court to suppress anything he said during it as evidence.
On September 27th the DOJ clapped back, inadvertently revealing the real reason behind Scott’s desperate filing.
During his interview, conducted by an FBI special agent and IRS criminal investigation agent, Scott was queried on ‘investment made by the Fenero Funds into Cryptoreal Investment Trust‘.
At one point Scott (right, with his wife), was asked
to remind the agents who the investors in the Fenero Funds had been.
Fenero Funds was a shell company Scott set up to launder stolen OneCoin investor funds through.
In response to a series of questions about Fenero’s investors, Scott lied to the agents about who Fenero’s investors were and where the money in the Fenero Funds was from.
Scott’s false statements included, among others, that OneCoin and Ruja Ignatova had nothing to do with Fenero or any other funds that Scott had worked on.
Contrary to Scott’s statements to the agents, all of the money invested into the Fenero Funds was derived from the OneCoin fraud scheme and was invested into the Fenero Funds on behalf of Ignatova.
This was towards the end of the interview, and unbeknownst to Scott, US authorities knew full well about investment by Fenero Funds at the time.
After the agents confronted Scott about his untruthful statements, and informed him that they had evidence that Fenero was funded by proceeds from OneCoin, Scott informed the agents that “I’d like to have a lawyer help me.”
After Scott made this statement, the agents concluded the interview, and did not ask Scott any additional substantive questions.
Mark Scott doesn’t want the DOJ using his interview answers because lying to federal agents looks terrible in court.
All this baloney about “they didn’t let me speak to a lawyer” is desperation.
With respect to Scott bringing up lawyers during his interview though, the DOJ notes the first request was made regarding
a civil attorney, (and) was not a clear invocation and was unrelated to custodial interrogation.
I.e. while Scott did bring up contacting an attorney, it had nothing to do with his arrest and subsequent interview.
Scott’s second purported invocation was at best ambiguous and did not constitute an invocation under controlling law.
The third time Scott brought up an attorney (when the interviewing agents let him know they knew he was lying), this time it was clearly in relation to his interview and then present situation.
Consequently the agents, at Scott’s request, ended the interview and questioning.
As per the interview transcript, Scott also waived his right to have a lawyer present during questioning at the start of the review.
The DOJ notes;
There is also no suggestion that the waiver was coerced or involuntary.
Finally the DOJ points out that as per the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Scott’s deadline to file for suppression was May 14th, 2019.
The Government produced Scott’s post-arrest statement to defense counsel over a year ago, on September 14, 2018.
Scott has articulated no basis for his failure to file his motion by the Court’s deadline. Nor could he.
Accordingly, Scott’s right to bring a motion to suppress at this stage has been waived.
A decision on Scott’s suppression motion remains pending. Stay tuned…
Regarding the Transcript of Mark S. Scott’s Post-Arrest Interrogation (courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.127.1.pdf), here are couple of points that I want raise:
– Ruja was introduced to Scott by Giblert Armenta and a Locke Lord crypto currency specialist.
Here is more about Gilbert R Armenta and his role in OneCoin scam:
https://behindmlm.com/companies/onecoin/what-happened-to-onecoin-ceos-pablo-munoz-and-pierre-arens/#comment-413489
As well his associaton with OneCoin and drug-trafficers, here some additional info about Mr Armenta’s legal troubles: grarmenta.com
– Scott has trouble giving agents the name of the other Locke Lord specialist/lawyer who had also contacts with Ruja. At first he said “I wanna say Robert [inaudible]…”, and later he says:
I find no matches with Peter Courtneidge, but if I combine Scott’s ramblings, and see if the person is named Robert Courtneidge — then yes, there is a payment specialist in Locke Lord by that name:
fintechfutures.com/2016/07/people-move-robert-courtneidge-locke-lord-payments-power-10-list/
– When asked about Ruja, Scott describes how 190 million dollars of the criminal proceeds from OneCoin was sent back to Daubai based investment fund.
The person whose name Scott struggles with is very likely Aamer Abdul Aziz – Chairman & Group CEO of Phoenix Investment fund.
Here is a link to the fund’s website which includes Mr. Aziz’s photo & background info:
phoenixfund.net/our-team/
Coincidentally, pages 15 and 30-31 of Konstantin Ignatov’s Criminal complaint document describe evidence found from Konstantin’s phone about how an “UAE Investment Fund” was used to launder 185 million euros worth of OneCoin criminal proceeds, originating from “Ireland Fund”(Scott’s Fenero, quite apparently).
On page 31 describe how Konstantin sent a picture of the “UAE Fund Manager”(Mr. Aziz) to OneCoin Dubai chief Velizara Ivanova, who replied “This ffffff is in Ascot – having fun with our $ “.
It’s pretty bad for this “UAE Fund Manager” that US Government describes the correspondence as follows:
Btw, I wonder why Gilbert Armenta or his Fates Group/Zala/OneEux/JSC Capital companies weren’t one of the “Affected Parties” in the recent Order Directing OneCoin-Related Parties To Show Cause Regarding Any Claimed Attorney-Client Privilege? (justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/district-court-issues-order-directing-onecoin-related-parties-show-cause-regarding-any)
He is very clearly involved. Could it be that Armenta is co-operating with the Government too?
I thought Konstantin’s absence from the list was also a bit strange… Some procedual reason why it was not necessary to inlcude him in that list?
Hahaha onecoin investors hope you are safe?
Breaking news.
US Government has submitted a Motion to offer the testimony of witnesses via live closed circuit television/CCTV during Mark Scott’s trial that starts on 4 November 2019.
Four current or former employees of the Bank of Ireland (“BOI”) are willing to testify in Court!!!
Motion: courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.128.0.pdf
Affidavit Declaration of Julieta V. Lozano: courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.128.1.pdf
Thanks for that. Going to take a short break then I’ll get stuck into it.
Phoenix Fund was mentioned in new documents too:
And I believe I have found the photo that, according to the DOJ court documents, Konstantin sent in June 2018 to Velizara “cash counting machine” Ivanova, in relation her comment:
“This ffffff is in Ascot – having fun with our $ “.
It’s probably this:
facebook.com/PhoenixThoroughbreds/photos/a.224912558073143/253146765249722/
Somebody on the Twitter should ask Mr. Aziz about his connections to OneCoin, Scott and Ruja Ignatova:
twitter.com/amerabdulaziz
Mr. Aziz probably founded and funded this race horse enterprise in late 2017 largerly with OneCoin criminal proceeds:
twitter.com/PhoenixThoroug1
It’s hilariously stereotypical that criminal money from a scheme conducted by an alleged gypsy (Ruja) ends up in horse racing & breeding business. 🙂
Yet another sealed document filed in the case today on September 30th.
In checking out the bio’s of the Team from Phoenix Investment Fund, I found this entry for Phil Shanks quite interesting, and I quote:
Quite the interesting feat since this is 2019 and he formed the property trading company in 2020,
Obviously a typo, but for such a “prestigious firm” one would think their editors would have found this error and prevented it from being printed.
Also their website is still showing a copyright of 2018, which makes one wonder how “active” they are today.
Regarding the Phoenix Investment Fund (Or “Phoenix Fund Investments” as it was formally put in recent court documents), I have a vague recollection of stumbling upon the name before, more precisely in the context of reading somewhere (perhaps a machine translated Bulgarian article? Gerlachreport?) that Ruja helped Konstantin to get clear from his drug addiction, paying his rehab, etc.
And to honor Konstantin’s successful recovery, she named an investment fund after the fact — that like Phoenix, her little brother managed to make a rebirth “from the ashes”.
Coincidentally or not, one of Konstantin Ignatov’s tattoos seems to be Phoenix themed:
instagram.com/p/BTGDJFJAKK7
The problem is that I haven’t been able to find the article again. Perhaps somebody remembers the article and can point to the source? Or perhaps my memomory made tricks to me?
This is going to be the schedule on events before Mark S Scott’s trial:
(courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287/gov.uscourts.nysd.482287.131.0.pdf)
In the filings there is also a “Superseding S8 Indictment”, which isn’t available on Courtlistener as I write.
And finally, on October 1st, Scott’s defense issued a response to the Government’s opposition to suppress portion of Post-Arrest Statement:
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.511619/gov.uscourts.nysd.511619.130.0.pdf
I think both sides are playing a bit of gymnastics. Working in favor of the government is that Scott is a lawyer and knew how to clearly communicate he wanted one.
Yet in the end all did we umm and ahh about it. He knew his rights.
Be interesting to see which way the motion goes.
I don’t think it’s linguistic gymnastics, but a solid point about “if-then” statement as a reasonable indicator of ambiguity.
Scott’s defense keeps omitting the if-part, and therefore he didn’t even make the kind above-quoted “I think…” statement that they try to claim he made.
In addition, the Government alleged that Scott’s defense misinterpreted the case law that they relied on when stating that “I think I should get a lawyer in involved should have ended the interrogation”. They just repeated it without addressing the Government’s point:
Scott’s argument against the procedual defect that Government raised about the motion being untimely, is interesting one.
They try to rely on a fact that they didn’t have the same version of the interrogation transcript that Government had. Scott had unredacted, and therefore more extensive version of the transcript from Sep 2018.
I’d suspect that Scott’s lawyers should have realized the potential signifigance of the transcript from their version of it, and file motion about its alleged problems in timely manner…
Even if there were some minor “discovery shortcomings” on part of the Government, I’m not sure how relevant they are about allowing untimely motion — I don’t see that they cite any case law on this….