Attorney Mark Scott was charged in August 2018 on the basis of laundering an amount of over $400 million in investors’ funds via a valueless cryptocurrency scam called OneCoin, and he’s currently standing trial.
The transcript of the hearings held on September 13th last year was made public recently, a few months after the court hearings. The transcript of the proceedings provides an in-depth understanding of the global investigation behind the OneCoin crypto Ponzi scheme and its immense scope of fraud.
US regulators were being represented at the hearings by Department of Justice attorney for New York in the Southern District. Along with the US attorney, an FBI agent and two federal prosecutors also represented the regulators at the hearing.
When asked to comment on the case during the initial phase of the hearing, the federal prosecutors described the OneCoin cryptocurrency as a fraudulent digital currency. The transcript shows that the scheme was operating globally and was able to gather over $4 billion (!) from the victims across the world.
The controversy behind OneCoin started over two years ago when it was first reported that the company was acquiring affiliate investment information using a SQL database. OneCoin immediately denied the allegations, further claiming that investigations that were held in Germany at the time had verified that the company had a blockchain (which grants legitimacy and transparency to a cryptocurrency. Although no evidence supporting this claim about the investigations were actually found, OneCoin investors insisted on calling an end for the proceedings against OneCoin.
The CEO of BusinessForHome, Ted Nuyten, one of the many online defenders of OneCoin (and certainly one of the most influential ones) is believed to be the recipient of unrevealed sums of money in exchange for advantageous coverage of OneCoin to present the sham digital currency in a good light, including even making appearances in promotional contents for OneCoin.
Laundering Money of the Crypto Scam in the Cayman Islands and Ireland
The transcript shows that US federal prosecutor claims that Mark Scott’s role in the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme was that, despite being a licensed attorney who is supposed to abide by the law, he partnered up with conspirators and developed hedge funds around the world with the accounts established in the Cayman Islands and Ireland. And through those accounts set up, he was able to launder money gathered deceitfully by the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.
To achieve this, Mark Scott manipulated and lied to major banks (including the Bank of Ireland) and to hedge fund managers, and he purposely and knowingly misled them about where the actual funds came from. In order to cover it all up, Scott showed that the investors’ funds were coming from a group of European families who supposedly had known Scott and invested into cryptocurrency scheme.
The proceedings of the trial ended, and Scott was able to make a $2.5 million bail despite the prosecutors’ warning that he might escape.
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