Even as the OneCoin Ponzi scheme makes its way through the courts, a movie about it is now in development with a Titanic lead star.
As reported by Deadline, Kate Winslet has signed on to star and produce Fake!, a movie based on an unpublished book by Jen McAdam and Douglas Thompson. McAdam, a victim of the OneCoin scheme, will be a producer on the film.
Fake! will be written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, who helmed The Report, a political drama based on the CIA’s report on torture post 9/11, and wrote the 2011 pandemic movie Contagion, which also starred Winslet.
OneCoin was founded in 2014 by Ruja Ignatova in Bulgaria. As Cryptox previously reported, OneCoin followed the typical structure of a multilevel marketing scheme, but with a cryptocurrency twist. It promised OneCoin is the next Bitcoin though it wasn’t backed by a blockchain or a network. Despite several warnings from crypto industry insiders and government agencies, OneCoin continued to be popular, fostering an ‘us vs. them’ mentality.
McAdam, who started a support group for OneCoin victims, told Cryptox she and her friends and family invested and lost over 250,000 euros ($298,800) before she learned its server was not a blockchain and could not create crypto.
Ignatova was charged with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering on May 7, but she has not been seen since 2017. Her brother Konstantin Ignatova, an executive in OneCoin, was charged with the same in March. He has since agreed to testify against his sister. Investors have sued OneCoin for fraud alleging losses of up to $5 billion.
Fake! is not the first artwork inspired by the OneCoin scheme. A TV show based on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) podcast about Ignatova is also in development.
