The brother of infamous fugitive ‘Cryptoqueen’ has reportedly been released from a US prison for his role in the $4 billion OneCoin crypto fraud.
Bloomberg reports that Konstantin Ignatov, the brother of Ruja Ignatova, has been given a 34-month prison sentence – time he had already served in prison.
Authorities said that after his sister disappeared in 2017, Ignatov became the de facto ringleader of the fraud.
But because Ignatov cooperated with prosecutors, the judge recommended a prison sentence after he pleaded guilty. Ignatov was also ordered to forfeit $118,000.
Part of his testimony was against Mark Scott, a lawyer who agreed to launder hundreds of millions of dollars for the OneCoin scam. Scott was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the report said.
Ignatov was initially arrested at Los Angeles airport in 2019 and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
In September, Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the scam and ordered to forfeit more than $300 million.
Ruja Ignatova, whose whereabouts remain unknown, was placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list in 2022. However, a previous report suggests that she may have been murdered in 2018 on the orders of a drug lord.
Launched in Bulgaria in 2014 by Ruja and Karl Sebastian Greenwood, OneCoin was a fraudulent operation that marketed a digital asset of the same name in the style of a pyramid scheme.
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Featured image: Shutterstock/SerGRAY/Natalia Siiatovskaia