Former OneCoin Legal Head Sentenced to Four Years in Jail for Money Laundering

Irina Dilkinska, the former head of legal and compliance for the multibillion-dollar OneCoin fraud scheme, has been sentenced to four years in jail after admitting she helped launder millions of dollars.

42-year-old Irina Dilkinska was sentenced on Wednesday to four years in jail by United States District Judge Edgardo Ramos, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In addition to her four-year jail sentence, Dilkinska was sentenced to one month of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $111 million as restitution.

Judge Ramos reportedly denied Dilkinska's request to avoid jail time and return home to care for young children in Bulgaria, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Ramos said Dilkinska was “a woman of great intelligence and a woman who ought to have known better,” adding that she was fully aware of the legal consequences of her actions while involved in operating the Ponzi scheme.

“I honestly do not understand what prevented her from leaving the scheme before the point when it was brought down,” Ramos said.

Dilinska pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in a Manhattan federal court on Nov. 10. Each charge carried a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, meaning that Dilkinska faced the possibility of 10 years imprisonment.

Dilkinsa is the latest OneCoin executive to land themselves in prison for their role in the fraud scheme.

On Sept. 12 last year, the scheme’s co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on fraud and money laundering charges and was ordered to pay $300 million in restitution.

OneCoin was founded by “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova and Greenwood in 2014 and promised guaranteed returns to investors from a bogus cryptocurrency called “OneCoin.”

However, it was later revealed that the company had never built a functioning blockchain and instead operated as a pyramid scheme that made its money by paying commissions to investors to sign up a constant stream of new buyers.

Ignatova remains at large having gone missing in October 2017 after a flight to Greece just 15 days after a federal warrant was issued for her arrest. Some have speculated that Ignatova has been killed following the murders of several OneCoin associates in Mexico in 2020.

OneCoin was exposed as fraudulent in 2015 but still managed to generate over $4.3 billion in revenue, recording profits of nearly $3 billion between 2014 and 2016.