More than a decade after the OneCoin scam began, victims of the $4 billion cryptocurrency fraud scheme are now eligible for compensation from a $40 million fund of seized assets, as announced by the US Department of Justice. Between 2014 and 2019, co-founders Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood operated a global cryptocurrency investment scheme, defrauding up to 3.4 million investors worldwide. The scheme, which was based in Sofia, Bulgaria, involved the sale of a fraudulent cryptocurrency through a multi-level marketing network, with investors worldwide losing over $4 billion. The scheme collapsed in 2017 after it was discovered that Ignatova and her team had manipulated the perceived value of OneCoin.
In 2022, Greenwood admitted to federal wire fraud and money laundering charges. According to US Attorney Jay Clayton, the founders of OneCoin 'sold a lie disguised as cryptocurrency', resulting in losses of over $4 billion worldwide. The DOJ has stated that it will continue to work to seize criminal proceeds and prioritize returning money to victims. This development comes after the FTX Recovery Trust announced that it would distribute $2.2 billion to creditors, as part of a process to recover assets for users of the collapsed crypto trading platform.