Several individuals are facing criminal proceedings launched against them for participating in the fraudulent digital currency scheme of OneCoin. Konstantin Ignatov, Ruja Ignatova and Mark Scott, continue to face these proceedings at the New York Southern District Court.
The whole crypto Ponzi scheme is estimated to be worth billions of dollars and so far the investigating bodies have identified dozens of people who assisted or operated the fraud in a bid to capture millions of dollars out of their naïve customers.
Recently, staff members from Bank of Ireland were asked by the court to give testimony against Mark Scott, one of the most prominent figures who allegedly masterminded the fraudulent scheme. These three people include Deidre Ceann, Derek Collins and Greg Begley. Deirdre Ceann has worked at Foreign Direct Investment team at BOI and Derek Collisions has served as Executive Vice President and Relationship Director for BOI in 2016.
The testimony of all three members of the bank will be decisive for the fate of Mark Scott who was originally charged in a one-count indictment with conspiracy to launder money out of the country. Greg is accused of processing the paperwork that was submitted by Scott.
The Government’s position is that Mark Scott committed a fraud and money laundering that amounted to more than four hundred million dollars. Most of these amounts were directly channeled from OneCoin through successive purported private equity funds that were registered in the Biritsh Virgin Islands. The bank accounts of fraudulent entities were located in the Cayman Island. Scott himself was running a corporate account with the bank and used his relationship to it to artfully hide the true source of funds from the BOI officials. The investigation officials found him violating Title 19, Section 1956 (h) of the United States Code.
Scott Still Denies the Allegations
Despite the plethora of evidences against Scott, he has consistently maintained that he was not involved with any issue of money laundering. He also said that he had absolutely no knowledge of the fraudulent nature of the crypto Ponzi scheme.
The OneCoin scam was initiated by two siblings, a brother and a sister, from Bulgaria who had promised to release a digital currency on a number of occasions. Overtime, it has become one of the largest cryptocurrency scams ever to exist and the testimonies will open a Pandora box for the defendants in the case.
The next session of the court will meet on November 4, 2019 to decide upon the extent of fraud in which Scott was involved.
