OneCoin’s Head of Legal and Compliance Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud and Money Laundering Charges


🔼OneCoin’s legal chief pleaded guilty to money laundering and wire fraud charges, according to a statement released today from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

‼️Bulgarian national Irina Dilkinska, 42, faces up to 10 years in prison for her role in OneCoin’s notorious crypto fraud scheme. In a Manhattan federal court, Dilkinska confessed to aiding in the laundering of $110 million in illicit profits generated through OneCoin, as well as assisting in the running of day-to-day operations at the fraudulent firm. Her sentencing hearing has been scheduled for February 14 next year.

🟢Dilkinska was previously charged in March and extradited from Bulgaria to the United States.

💬 “As OneCoin’s so-called ‘Head of Legal and Compliance’ Irina Dilkinska accomplished the exact opposite goal of her position,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. “As she has now admitted, Dilkinska facilitated the laundering of millions of dollars of illicit profits OneCoin accrued through its multi-level-marketing scheme.”

🔔OneCoin was a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme conducted by Bulgaria-based company OneCoin Ltd and Belize-based OneLife Network Ltd, founded by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood. OneCoin covertly engaged in a database entry scam that mimicked transactions absent from a genuine blockchain, and there was no mining activity supporting the purported release and circulation of the cryptocurrency.

South Korean Police Shut Down ‘International Crypto Fraud’ Ring, Freeze $1.2m

📣 South Korean police have swooped on a group of suspected “international” crypto fraudsters, freezing over $12 million and arresting 49.

‼️ Newsis reported that the Cyber Investigation Department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has “arrested a total of 49 people, including the six suspected leaders of six separate organizations.”

🔔 The group has been charged with fraud, with officers suspecting the group of “operating a fake cryptoasset investment site.” The site was mainly used to attract overseas investors in locations including the Philippines, police spokespeople explained.

⚠️ Police think the group was active from September 2020 until April last year, and that it managed to raise over $11.5 million from at least 253 victims. Officers think the group targeted potential victims by buying personal data leaked to the internet. And police claimed the group had bought access to “1.62 million pieces of illegally acquired personal information.”

🔼According to police sources, the group also tried to lure would-be investors onto their site by “randomly distributing” promotional messages to public crypto-related chat app groups.

South Korean High Court Sentences Crypto Scammer to 9 Years in Jail ‼️

🔔 A branch of the South Korean High Court has jailed a convicted crypto scammer who operated a bogus token trading platform for nine and a half years. Per Seoul Kyungjae, the case was heard at the Busan High Court (Ulsan Tribunal) on November 12. The scammer, unnamed for legal reasons, was originally sentenced to serve eight years by an Ulsan-based district court. But the High Court upheld the scammer’s guilty verdict – and increased the jail term after hearing additional evidence from prosecutors.

📣 The court heard that the individual, named as A in the national media, told victims that they could use “crypto market manipulation” methods to make “x50 profits” on their initial stakes. The court heard that the bogus crypto exchange was operational from March to August 2019. Prosecutors said that A had “advertised” the platform on social media channels. The scammer raised almost $1 million from “about 90 victims,” the court heard.

⚠️ A claimed that the platform made use of a sophisticated piece of software “developed in-house” that manipulated crypto prices. A also tried to promote a cryptoasset that they claimed could be used to pay at “convenience stores, department stores, and gas stations.” But the court heard that A was in debt to the tune of about $0.5 million when making these claims, and was on probation while operating the scheme.

Talos and Uniswap Forge Landmark Deal to Boost DeFi Access for Institutions 📣


📌 Talos – a digital trading infrastructure provider – has teamed up with Uniswap and Fireblocks to connect institutional traders to the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

⬆️Per a press release from Uniswap on Thursday, Talos’s clients will be able to use the protocol’s trading APIs to access trading for thousands of tokens with their familiar Talos order book format.

🔔 Once launched, Talos clients can execute orders on Uniswap using its time-weight average price (TWAP) algorithm – a widely used price oracle mechanism designed to exclude short-term price manipulations.

⚠️The integration will allow Talos’s strategies to seamlessly interact with both centralized and decentralized liquidity venues and help achieve best execution.

Anton Katz, CEO and Co-Founder of Talos, stated:

“At the cornerstone of the DeFi ecosystem, Uniswap has the breadth of assets and depth of liquidity that institutional traders need… Together, we share a vision of making digital assets more accessible in a financial marketplace that’s more open.”

✔️ Uniswap is the world’s largest decentralized exchange (DEX) and liquidity venue, currently boasting $3.6 billion in TVL, according to DeFiLlama.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Expresses Willingness to Cooperate on Granting More Powers to Regulate Crypto Exchanges 📣

🟢The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, John Lee, has responded to the recent investigation into the unlicensed virtual-asset trading platform Hounax.

🔼 On November 27, Chief Executive John Lee addressed the recent virtual platform supervision fraud and emphasized the importance of government supervision to protect investors and crack down on unlicensed platforms. According to a local news blog, he expressed a willingness to cooperate with regulators and grant additional powers if needed to crack down on unlicensed crypto exchanges.

He said,

💬“If it is necessary to provide power to regulatory agencies, the government will actively cooperate.”

✔️ His comments highlight the need for government supervision to protect investors and combat unlicensed platforms in the crypto space, as the recent Hounax fraud case follows a similar incident involving JPEX, a crypto exchange. The JPEX exchange scandal received over 2,000 complaints and resulted in approximately $180 million in losses.

🔴 A total of 66 individuals have been arrested in connection with the JPEX scandal. In response to these events, local regulators in Hong Kong are strengthening crypto regulations to prevent future industry catastrophes.

IBM Unveils New Cold Storage Technology for Enhanced Crypto Asset Security ⚠️

⬆️ IBM has announced the release of the latest technology designed to enhance the security of cold storage for digital assets, aiming to revolutionize the way cryptos are managed and protected.

➡️The IBM Hyper Protect Offline Signing Orchestrator (OSO) is specifically developed to overcome the challenges associated with traditional methods of cold storage for digital assets. By integrating advanced security features such as disconnected network operations, time-based security, and electronic approval by multiple stakeholders, OSO represents a significant leap in protecting high-value transactions.

📌In the announcement blog, IBM wrote, “OSO is designed to address limitations of current cold storage offerings for digital assets, including the need for people to perform manual procedures for the execution of a cold storage transaction.”

⚡️ Further elaborating on the functionality, the blog explained, “Hyper Protect OSO provides a policy engine that brokers communication between two different applications that have been designed not to communicate directly with each other for security purposes.”

SBF Decides Against Filing Post-Trial Motions, Shifts Focus to Appeal 📣

⚠️The lawyers of disgraced FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, have decided to not file any post-trial motions following his fraud conviction on November 2nd, according to a letter filed by his attorneys on December 1st.

💬 “After further consideration, we have decided not to file any post-trial motions,” wrote Bankman-Fried’s attorneys in a letter to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. “We reserve our rights to pursue any claims on appeal.”

➡️ Depending on the kind, a granted post-trial motion has the potential to change the result of a trial entirely. The decision by Bankman-Fried’s defense suggests that they will be focusing their efforts on an appeal.

🔝“Mr Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him,” said defense attorney, Mark Cohen, in a statement shortly following his client’s conviction.

House Committee Unanimously Passes Pro-Blockchain Bill 🔥

🔴 The House Committee on Energy has voted unanimously to approve a new piece of legislation entitled the “Deploying American Blockchains Act.”

📌 According to the brief, the bill would “direct the Secretary of Commerce to promote the competitiveness of the United States related to the deployment, use, application, and competitiveness of blockchain technology or other distributed ledger technology, and for other purposes.”

⚠️ The brief notes that the Secretary of Commerce would “serve as the principal advisor to the President” regarding policy issues related to blockchain technology.

© Moreover, the bill would require the Secretary of Commerce to spearhead a “Blockchain Deployment Program” that would “support American leadership in the deployment and use of blockchain technology and other distributed ledger technology, applications built on blockchain technology or other distributed ledger technology, tokens, and tokenization.”

📉 Led by efforts from Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Congressman Larry Bucshon (R-IN), the bill has even garnered approval from some of the crypto industry’s biggest voices, including the Blockchain Association and the Chamber of Digital Commerce.