More than a decade after the OneCoin scam began, victims of the $4 billion fraud scheme are now eligible for compensation through a $40 million fund of seized assets, as announced by the US Department of Justice. The scheme, which operated from 2014 to 2019, involved Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood, co-founders of OneCoin Ltd., who defrauded up to 3.4 million investors worldwide through a global multi-level-marketing network. The fraudulent cryptocurrency, which was marketed and sold by the Bulgaria-based operation, did not actually exist on any blockchain and did not involve real cryptocurrencies. Instead, the scheme relied on promoters soliciting investments in exchange for purported tokens.
The DOJ has described the scheme as "one of the largest global fraud schemes in history", which collapsed in 2017 after Ignatova and her team were found to have manipulated the perceived value of OneCoin. In 2022, Greenwood admitted to federal wire fraud and money laundering charges, and a $5 million reward was offered for the missing Cryptqueen in June 2024.
According to US Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, "OneCoin's founders sold a lie disguised as cryptocurrency, costing victims more than $4 billion worldwide". The DOJ has stated that it will continue working to seize criminal proceeds and prioritize returning money to the victims. This development comes roughly four weeks after the FTX Recovery Trust announced its plan to distribute $2.2 billion to creditors in its fourth payout under the exchange's Chapter 11 plan, which aims to recover assets for users of the once-prominent crypto trading platform that collapsed in November 2022.