Singaporean Man Found Guilty Of Promoting The OneCoin Ponzi Scheme

A 52-year-old Singaporean man was found guilty of promoting the $4 billion Onecoin Ponzi Scheme more than three years ago, as we are learning more about it in the upcoming crypto news.

According to the reports by The Straits Times, FokFook Sneg, the 54-year-old Singaporean man was convicted for engaging in fraudulent activities that link to OneCoin between January 2016 and June 2017. Fook Seng was charged back in 2019 for breaching the Multi-level marketing and Pyramid Selling Act. According to the police, the crime was a first of its kind and the man will have to pay the sum of $100,000 as a fine.

The 52-year old used the larger scale events, social media platforms, and local companies such as the trading firm “A Roboclean” to promote this scheme and to lure investors. The police noted that Fook Seng had a partner who was also charged for the same offense but hasn’t received his verdict yet. Both of them managed to lure about 1000 investors within Singapore though their fake promotions. The victims were required to purchase packages with online educational courses and they included free promotional tokens that investors could use to generate more Onecoin tokens through mining, but of course, it was all a sham.

Aside from the free tokens, the investors were told they are able to increase their earnings by referring people to join the network and to purchase packages as with any other MLM Pyramid Scheme. Launched in 2014 in Bulgaria, OneCoin was one of the biggest scams in the entire crypto industry, managing to steal almost $4 billion from investors around the world but the scheme started failing in 2016 as the promoters continued acquiring more members until 2019. Most countries including China, New Zealand, and the United States classified OneCoin as fraudulent and warned investors to stay away from it.

The brother of the Ponzi scheme’s founder pleaded guilty to money laundering and fraud charges in the United States. The founder, Ruja Ignatov, left the company in 2017 and vanished from the face of the earth. Her brother, Konstantin Ignatov, took over the operations of the scheme. He was later arrested by the US Authorities and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Konstantin will likely spend 90 years in prison.