Irina Dilkinska could face up to 10 years in prison for her involvement in OneCoin.
OneCoin head of legal and compliance Irina Dilkinska pleaded guilty this week to wire fraud and money laundering charges related to a cryptocurrency scam that defrauded and resulted in $4 billion in fraud.
The Justice Department said U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos accepted Dilkinska's guilty plea.
The 42-year-old Bulgarian citizen pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a possible maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to an official news release.
The scam dates back to 2014, when Ruja Ignatova, known as the “Crypto Queen,” and Karl Sebastian Greenwood co-founded OneCoin, a Bulgaria-based company that promoted the cryptocurrency of the same name.
However, it turned out to be a fraudulent pyramid scheme operating as a multi-level marketing (MLM) network.
OneCoin attracted over 3 million investors, generated $4.3 billion in sales revenue between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016, and earned $2.91 billion in profits.
Dilkinska was purportedly OneCoin’s head of legal and compliance, but instead of ensuring legal compliance, he actively participated in its operations and facilitated money laundering, including transferring $110 million in fraudulently obtained proceeds to an entity in the Cayman Islands.
In September, Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role.
Ignatova, meanwhile, faces charges in the Southern District of New York in 2017 related to OneCoin fraud and money laundering.
She disappeared on October 25, 2017, after flying from Sofia to Athens, and was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in June 2022, with a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to her arrest.
Ignatova has not been seen in public since her disappearance, but some Bulgarian sources speculate that she may have been brutally murdered in 2018 on the orders of a local drug lord. #加密诈骗 #OneCoin
