Irina Dilinska, the former head of legal and compliance for the multibillion-dollar OneCoin fraud scheme, has been sentenced to a four-year prison term for her involvement in the massive $4 billion cryptocurrency scam.
In delivering Irina Dilinska’s four-year prison sentence, the presiding judge rebuked her character, referring to her as “a woman of great intelligence who ought to have known better.”
After confessing to aiding in the laundering of millions of dollars, the ex-legal and compliance head of the multibillion-dollar OneCoin scam received a four-year prison term.
In a New York courtroom on April 3, Irina Dilkinska, a 42-year-old Bulgarian national who served as the head of legal and compliance for the notorious OneCoin scheme, faced a four-year prison sentence handed down by Judge Edgardo Ramos, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Irina Dilkinska’s punishment for her role in the OneCoin fraud scheme did not end with her four-year prison sentence, as Judge Edgardo Ramos also imposed one month of supervised release following her incarceration and mandated the forfeiture of an eye-watering $111 million in restitution.
According to a Bloomberg report on April 3, Judge Ramos rejected Dilkinska’s plea to avoid imprisonment and return to Bulgaria to care for her young children.
In a rebuke of Irina Dilkinska’s willful disregard for the law and the financial well-being of OneCoin’s victims, Judge Edgardo Ramos highlighted the fact that Dilkinska, a highly intelligent and educated individual, had been fully cognizant of the criminality of her actions during her tenure with the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.
“I honestly do not understand what prevented her from leaving the scheme before the point when it was brought down,” Ramos said.
In a Manhattan federal court on November 10, Dilinska entered a guilty plea for charges related to wire fraud and money laundering.
With Irina Dilinska’s guilty pleas to the charges of wire fraud and money laundering, each count carrying a potential maximum sentence of five years incarceration, the former OneCoin legal boss faced the harrowing prospect of spending a decade behind bars for her crimes.
The latest addition to the list of OneCoin executives serving prison sentences for their involvement in the fraud scheme is Dilkinsa.
Last year, on September 12, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, one of the scheme’s co-founders, received a 20-year prison sentence for fraud and money laundering charges. He was also directed to pay $300 million in restitution.
In 2014, “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova and Greenwood established OneCoin, offering investors guaranteed returns through a fraudulent cryptocurrency named “OneCoin.”
Nevertheless, investigations uncovered that the firm had never developed a functional blockchain. Instead, it functioned as a pyramid scheme, generating revenue by compensating investors for recruiting new participants.
Ignatova has evaded capture since disappearing in October 2017, shortly after boarding a flight to Greece, just 15 days following the issuance of a federal warrant for her arrest.
There has been speculation suggesting that Ignatova may have met a fatal end, particularly in light of the murders of several OneCoin associates in Mexico in 2020.
Despite being revealed as fraudulent in 2015, OneCoin continued to amass over $4.3 billion in revenue, with profits nearing $3 billion from 2014 to 2016.
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