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Ignatova Route, the infamous "Cryptorein" He remains on the run after boarding a plane and disappearing six years ago. But his ex-partner is going to prison.
A federal judge in New York has sentenced Karl Sebastian Greenwood to 20 years behind bars for his role in a global cryptocurrency scheme that defrauded investors of more than $4 billion.
Ignatova boarded a flight in Sofia, Bulgaria, in October 2017 and disappeared, leaving Greenwood and her other business partners to take the blame for her failed venture. She has been on the run ever since and continues the only woman among the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
More than 3 million people invested in the couple's fraudulent cryptocurrency, OneCoin, making it one of the largest global fraud schemes ever perpetrated, said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Greenwood, 46, is a citizen of Sweden and the United Kingdom. Federal prosecutors say his "mastery as a salesman" helped build OneCoin's early success.
"Greenwood and his co-conspirators, including fugitive Ruja Ignatova, scammed unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars with promises of a 'financial revolution' and claimed that OneCoin would be the 'Bitcoin killer,'" Williams said.aid in a statement after the sentencing last week.
"In fact, OneCoins were worthless and investors were left with nothing, while Greenwood lined his pockets with over $300 million."
Prosecutors say Greenwood and Ignatova took advantage of Bitcon's success to profit from the scheme. Ignatova called herself the โCryptoqueenโ and promoted her company as a lucrative rival to Bitcoin in the growing cryptocurrency market.
โTwo years from now, no one will be talking about Bitcoin again,โ he said at a flashy investor event in London the year before his demise.
But authorities said OneCoin was a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors in the United States and around the world. Court documents say Ignatova and Greenwood knew from the beginning that their ambitious venture was a Ponzi scheme.
While working on the OneCoin concept, they referred to it in emails as a "shoddy coin," federal officials said in court papers. The documents show that Greenwood described his investors as โidiotsโ and โcrazyโ in an email.
โIt may not be (something) really clean or something I normally work on or be proud of (except with you in private when we make the money),โ Ignatova wrote to Greenwood in 2014.
He also proposed an exit strategy in case the company failed, saying in a 2014 email to Greenwood that they should "take the money and run and blame someone else for this."
Prosecutors allege that's exactly what she did. And in July 2018, nine months after Ignatova disappeared, Greenwood was arrested at his home in Koh Samui, Thailand, and extradited to the United States.
He used the money to buy houses and a yacht.
Ignatova and Greenwood began offering OneCoin to investors in Europe, New York and other cities in 2014. They hosted webinars and online conferences urging potential investors to deposit funds into an account that would allow them to purchase OneCoin packages, according to a federal indictment. .
OneCoin operated as a multi-level marketing network in which investors received commissions for recruiting others to purchase packages of cryptocurrency, federal prosecutors said. The packages catered to various income levels, from โbeginnerโ to โtycoon trader.โ According to court documents, the partners promised buyers a five or even tenfold return on their investment.
Prosecutors say Greenwood used the flood of cash from investors to buy clothes, shoes, watches, a yacht and luxury designer homes in several countries, including Spain, Dubai and Thailand.
He also used investor funds to travel the world on a "OneCoin" private jet, prosecutors say.
Greenwood pleaded guilty in December to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to confiscate some $300 million.
"We hope this lengthy sentence will resonate with the financial sector and deter anyone who may be tempted to lie to investors and exploit the cryptocurrency ecosystem through fraud," Williams said.
