At long last, months after authorities in the US indicted one of its founders for fraud, the site for OneCoin has been taken down.
One of the biggest scams in history
The colossal ponzi scam, operating out of Sofia, Bulgaria, is thought to have been worth nearly $4 billion and to have affected around 3 million people.
AYO.NEWS first reported on the demise of OneCoin back in March, when founders Konstantin Ignatov and Ruja Ignatova were arrested at Los Angeles International, and charged with multiple fraud and money laundering offences (read more).
OneCoin.eu finally dead
Thankfully, according to MLM scam monitoring site BehindMLM.com, OneCoin.eu finally went dead on 30th November. Apparently, according to the domain’s registry, EurID, the site is offline due to criminal proceedings now ongoing against OneCoin.
In addition to criminal investigations in the US, it is also know there are ongoing investigations into OneCoin in Germany, Austria, Finland, Hungary and other countries.
Highlighting just how fake everything about OneCoin was, the news comes only days after OneCoin’s Sofia HQ (which had been raided by police back in January this year) was cleared out in a decidedly unglamorous fashion by a few blokes using an ancient, beaten-up Soviet-era UAZ van.
Ruja on the run, Konstantin facing 90 years
BehindMLM and others first suspected foul play regarding OneCoin way back in 2015, with worrying reports and media investigations triggering authorities around to issue warnings about the scheme.
With the potential to be one of the biggest scams in history, the OneCoin saga has recently taken another turn, with a lawyer associated with co-founder Ruja Ignatova now also being accused of helping her launder around $400m.
Currently Ruja is on the run, but her brother and fellow co-founder Konstantin, has now pleaded guilty to multiple charges including money laundering and fraud, and is facing a potential 90 years in prison – even after a plea bargain.
Crypto world still has controversial projects
Despite the high-profile nature of the OneCoin scam, and cull of dodgy crypto projects over the past year or so, new ventures continue to raise eyebrows.
In the last few days, Richard Hart, creator of the HEX altcoin has been making controversial promises of free tokens to Bitcoin (BTC) holders, and describing HEX as “the first high interest blockchain certificate of deposit.”
Unfortunately, it also seems that various spinoffs and incarnations of the original OneCoin scam are still operational, with sites like OneLife.eu still up and running, and possibly enabling continued OneCoin trading and luring more unsuspecting victims.
AYO.NEWS says:
To those of us immersed in the industry it can be easy to forget that many people among the general public still have very little knowledge about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Despite the substantial progress made over the past year, with many of the most obvious scams and dodgy ventures either being shut down or failing of their own accord, there’s still clearly a big problem.
And, it is a problem that is not going to be solved by even more regulation, which will just drag down completely legitimate businesses too, and waste public resources. What is desperately needed is education – not just in crypto-specific subjects, but better general business and financial education for everyone.
AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.
