The Florida-based US lawyer Mark S. Scott, 51, has been found guilty for his role in the OneCoin crypto scam, which raised more than $4 billion from investors convinced they were buying into a new digital currency. The New York jury found that Mark S. Scott helped to perpetrate the crypto scheme, routing approximately $400m out of the US while working to conceal the true ownership and source of the funds.
The three-week trial ended quickly after e-mails showed Ruja Ignatova asking Scott to “park” money for her for a fee, and him promising her anonymity.
Source: Inner City Press
The U.S. Prosecutors said Scott, a former Locke Lord LLP equity partner, earned about $50m with his activities. Scott’s lawyers had said he did not know that OneCoin was worthless. They argued that Scott was simply doing the job asked by Bulgarian OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova.
Mark S. Scott, an equity partner at a prominent international law firm, used his specialized knowledge as an experienced corporate lawyer to set up fake investment funds, which he used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud proceeds. He lined his pockets with over $50 million of the money stolen from victims of the OneCoin scheme. Scott, who boasted of earning ‘50 by 50’ now faces 50 years in prison for his crimes.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman
The federal jury in Manhattan, however, rejected the lawyer’s arguments, finding Scott guilty of conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud.
Ignatova’s younger brother, Konstantin Ignatov, who testified in the Scott trial, also recently pleaded guilty for his role in the OneCoin investment fraud. US-based investors claiming to have been defrauded by the scheme are also attempting to sue Mark S. Scott for recompense in a related case.
SCOTT, who boasted about earning “50 by 50,” was paid more than $50 million for his money laundering services. He used that money to purchase, among other things, a collection of luxury watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a Ferrari and several Porsches, a 57-foot Sunseeker yacht, and three multimillion-dollar seaside homes in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.