OneCoin’s Legal and Compliance Head, Irina Dilkinska, is facing charges for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in US federal court. Each of the charges could bring up to 20 years in prison.
The crypto pyramid scheme’s Legal Head has been extradited from Bulgaria on Monday, the Department of Justice has announced.
Dikinska has been accused of laundering more than $400 million of OneCoin’s proceeds. During the time she worked as Legal Head of the crypto scam, she created shell companies to launder the money. According to the court documents, she helped co-conspirator and former lawyer, Mark Scott, who is serving a 50-year sentence in jail.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:
Irina Dilkinska, the supposed Head of Legal and Compliance for the OneCoin cryptocurrency pyramid scheme, accomplished the exact opposite of her job title and allegedly enabled OneCoin to launder millions of dollars of illegal proceeds through shell companies. Dilkinska helped perpetuate a wide-ranging scheme with millions of victims and billions of dollars in losses, and she will now face justice for her alleged crimes.
OneCoin is one of the most notorious crypto scams. It was founded in 2014 in Sofia, Bulgaria by “cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood. The global multi-level-marketing (MLM) network managed to defraud $4 billion from investors around the world.
Greenwood is facing a prison sentence after pleading guilty to multiple charges. Ignatova, however, has been on the run since October 2017 when she got on a flight to Greece after the federal warrant for her arrest was issued.
Ignatova is on Europe and FBI’s most wanted lists since 2022 with a monetary reward offered for information leading to her arrest.
