The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a compensation program for people who lost money to the OneCoin cryptocurrency scheme, using forfeited assets taken from some of the operation’s organizers. The DOJ says more than $40 million in seized assets is available to repay anyone who purchased OneCoin between 2014 and 2019 and can show a net loss.
Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, described the claims process as a key step toward returning money to those hurt by the fraud. He acknowledged that full recovery for all victims is unlikely, but said the Office will continue to seize criminal proceeds and prioritize returning funds to victims when possible.
OneCoin began in 2014 and marketed itself as a competitor to Bitcoin, at one point being promoted as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The scheme later unraveled when users and regulators discovered the tokens had no genuine utility, and international probes exposed the operation as fraudulent.
The DOJ estimates that OneCoin stole more than $4 billion from about 3.5 million victims between 2014 and the end of 2016; some outside estimates put total worldwide losses as high as $19 billion. Central banks in several countries, including Latvia, Sweden and Norway, warned consumers that OneCoin could be a Ponzi scheme before its collapse.
OneCoin was founded in Bulgaria by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood and expanded into the U.S. around 2015. Bulgarian authorities raided OneCoin offices in 2018 and arrested Greenwood; in September 2023 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the fraud. Ignatova disappeared in 2017 after boarding a flight to Athens and remains at large; she is listed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list with a $5 million reward for information leading to her capture and conviction.
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