DOJ Opens $40M Compensation Process for OneCoin Crypto Fraud Victims

The US Department of Justice has done that announced a compensation process for victims of OneCoin, the fake cryptocurrency scheme that defrauded investors of approximately $4 billion from 2014 to 2019 through a global multi-level marketing network.

Victims can now file petitions to claim their share of more than $40 million in forfeited assets onecoinremission.comthrough a process administered by Kroll Settlement Administration LLC. The deadline for submissions is June 30.

“Victims are at the heart of everything we do at the Department of Justice,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a news release. “As we did in this complex investment fraud case, the Department is pursuing forfeiture to reap the profits from the crime and then use those funds to compensate victims wherever possible.”

Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the announcement “an important step toward returning money to those injured,” while James C. Barnacle Jr., deputy director in charge of the FBI New York Field Office, noted the “monumental” losses to victims, saying many had “unknowingly depleted their savings on a fraudulent investment scheme in an emerging financial ecosystem that would never pay off.”

The available compensation funds come from successful prosecutions of OneCoin’s leadership. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, co-founder of OneCoin, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2023 for his role in orchestrating the fraud, in which authorities seized assets that are now part of the victim compensation pool.

The missing crypto queen

Ruja Ignatova, the scheme’s other co-founder, known as the ‘Cryptoqueen’, remains at large. International authorities continue to hunt Ignatova, with the FBI adding her to their investigation Ten most wanted fugitives list and Europol placed her in its most wanted register.

In 2024, the US State Department increased the bounty for Ignatova to $5 million, but her disappearance remains unresolvedwith alleged sightings in Russia competing with theories that she may have been murdered years earlier.

The Justice Department continues to pursue Ignatova as part of the ongoing investigation, although her absence has not stopped authorities from recovering money for the victims. Earlier this year, a court in Guernsey seized $11.4 million in connection with the OneCoin fraud.