OneCoin, which has been long recognized as a ponzi scheme by the cryptocurrency community and an increasing number of governments including India and Germany, was recently declared as a ponzi scheme by Italian authorities and fined for $3 million.
Italian authorities told local publications including Bloomberg media partner Le Repubblica that sanctions have been imposed on all of OneCoin’s branches in Europe. OneLife network, the main operator of the OneCoin network, was fined for 2 million euros and the rest of the organization was also fined for 630,000 euros.
Repubblica further emphasized that the Italian authorities discovered OneCoin’s ponzi scheme-like nature when they realized OneCoin has been facilitating investments from new investors promising unrealistic returns. For that similar reason, OneCoin was shut down and banned in India, Germany and South Korea.
In April, Senior Police Inspector Shivaji Awate from the Economic Offence Wing II revealed that the Indian law enforcement seized bank accounts of OneCoin operators in India. Awate stated:
“None of the accounts were registered under the One Coin name. But the investors gave us the details of bank accounts into which they had paid the money, and accordingly we seized the bank accounts,” We have asked for the KYC details of the bank accounts, and only then it can be confirmed if these accounts were used exclusively for the One Coin scheme. There could be many more such accounts.”
Previously, respected developers including Bjorn Bjercke described OneCoin as a stripped coin creation based on a SQL backend. Bjercke, who was offered a position at the company for a $2.5 million annual salary, rejected the offer from OneCoin after discovering that the so-called “blockchain network” of OneCoin did not involve blockchain technology. In fact, Bjercke revealed that it is based on a centralized database and is designed to operate as a ponzi scheme.
At first, Bjercke was told he was offered a position at a technology company with a fixed salary of $2.5 million. However, almost immediately after the offer was provided, Bjercke grew suspicious in regard to the unreasonably high annual salary and requested the agency to disclose the name of the company. Once Bjercke was told it was a head position at OneCoin he was being offered, he declined, describing it as a scam.
“From what the rep. at Asenshia described, a non-technical person, it sounded much like a MS SQL, or could maybe but doubtful (be) Oracle DB, as that is way too expensive for this organization and without a credible CTO. It was very clear from our conversation that they did not have a blockchain,” said Bjercke.
BehindMLM, which facilitated an exclusive interview with Bjercke, also noted:
“In layman’s terms, OneCoin not having an actual blockchain conclusively proves all they are dealing with are script-generated Ponzi points. You invest money, OneCoin record an appropriate amount of OneCoins in their SQL database and when you cash out your OneCoin (based on an arbitrary value they set), pay you with subsequently invested funds.”