Former head of legal and compliance for the OneCoin fraud scheme, Irina Dilinska, has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to helping launder millions of dollars. The judge who handed down her sentence described her as “a woman of great intelligence and a woman who ought to have known better.”
United States District Judge Edgardo Ramos sentenced 42-year-old Dilkinska to four years in jail, along with one month of supervised release, and ordered her to forfeit $111 million as restitution.
Despite Dilinska’s plea to avoid jail time and return home to care for her young children in Bulgaria, Judge Ramos denied the request, emphasizing Dilinska’s awareness of the legal consequences of her actions while involved in operating the $4 billion Ponzi scheme.
Dilinska pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in a Manhattan federal court on Nov. 10, each carrying a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.
She is the latest OneCoin executive to face imprisonment for their involvement in the fraud scheme. Co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year on fraud and money laundering charges.
OneCoin, founded by Ruja Ignatova and Greenwood in 2014, promised guaranteed returns to investors from a bogus cryptocurrency called “OneCoin.” However, it was later revealed to be a pyramid scheme, operating without a functioning blockchain.
Ignatova, also known as the “Cryptoqueen,” remains at large after going missing in 2017, following the exposure of OneCoin’s fraudulent activities. Despite being exposed in 2015, OneCoin managed to generate over $4.3 billion in revenue and recorded profits of nearly $3 billion between 2014 and 2016.
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