The saga of OneCoin’s $4B ‘cryptocurrency’ scam

As far as cryptocurrency scams go, OneCoin is probably the one that rules them all.

US prosecutors have alleged that the Ponzi scheme raked in approximately $4 billion, defrauding investors from all over the globe.

In China alone, law enforcement agents recovered 1.7 billion yuan (US$267.5 million) and prosecuted 98 people.

Dr Ruja Ignatova, the scam’s spearhead, has been missing since 2017.

Sebastian Greenwood, her co-founder, was extradited from Thailand to the US following an operation involving the FBI in November 2018.

Hardly a week goes by without a new piece of information emerging about this wide-reaching scam, so here’s everything you need to know.

What is it

OneCoin was launched by Ignatova, a Bulgarian national, and according to her LinkedIn profile, a law graduate and former Mckinsey employee.

It claimed to work like any other cryptocurrency whose coins are generated through mining and can then be used to…