Five years in prison for Frank R. and four years behind bars for Manon H., ruled the court in Münster, Germany. The married couple defrauded millions of customers who were harmed with an amount approximately equal to three billion euros. Specifically, the verdict is that the two raised 320 million euros from around 90,000 customers across Europe for the fictitious cryptocurrency OneCoin. A lawyer from Munich, who transferred parts of this amount to foreign bank accounts, received two years and 9 months in prison, ARD informed about the end of the trial.
The couple acted as the European financial hub for the global fake cryptocurrency scam. Manon H., 50, and her husband, Frank R., 71, set up a company in Greven, Germany, for these transactions and entered into a contract with Ruza Ignatova, the mastermind of the fraud.
Detained on suspicion of money laundering
Ruzha Ignatova, a Bulgarian with a German passport, is the mastermind of the cryptocurrency scheme. In 2014-2016, she promoted OneCoin internationally at lavish events. After that, the self-proclaimed “crypto queen” went into hiding. He now appears on the FBI’s lists as one of the ten most wanted criminals.
The unraveling of the scheme began in 2016 after a report was filed by a blank Sparkasse branch in the German city of Steinfurt in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Suspicions then triggered hundreds of transactions with a total value of 320 million euros within just a few weeks. According to the prosecutor’s office, the couple from Greven received several million euros in commission for minimal effort.
The Munster trial lasted a total of three years. In 43 days of hearings, the court shed light on the fraud. According to the pyramid scheme, so-called “educational packages” were sold, providing customers with completely worthless cryptocurrency shares. Buyers were then misled into believing they could “mine” the currency and were presented with a fictitious increase in value, the German publication added.
Minimal hopes for compensation payments
The defendants were allegedly unaware of all the details of the OneCoin scam. However, the court is satisfied that there were sufficient indications that it was a fraud. In addition, the spouses from Greven did not have the necessary authorization for such financial operations.
The lawyer from Munich is accused of transferring 20 million euros to accounts abroad with false data. The defense argued that the defendants always considered OneCoin to be a trusted currency. That is why he pleaded for an acquittal or a light suspended sentence.
Even after the verdicts, there is little likelihood that the affected persons will receive compensation. So far, the prosecutor’s office has managed to secure only 28 million out of a total of about three billion euros of stolen money, explains ARD.
The creator of the OneCoin financial pyramid, Ruzha Ignatova, disappeared in 2017 and has been missing since then. She is believed to have gone into hiding after being warned that she was wanted and could be arrested. According to one of the versions, she is long dead, and according to another, she is in Dubai. None of this has been proven so far, and 6 years after her disappearance, Ignatova’s whereabouts remain unknown.
The material was published in DW>>
2024-01-09 13:25:34
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