Irina Dilkinska, the former head of legal and compliance for the fraudulent OneCoin scheme, has been sentenced to four years in prison for her involvement in money laundering. The 42-year-old was sentenced by United States District Judge Edgardo Ramos, as stated in a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on April 3. Along with her jail time, Dilkinska was also ordered to serve one month of supervised release and forfeit $111 million as restitution.
Despite Dilkinska’s request to avoid jail time and care for her young children in Bulgaria, Judge Ramos denied her plea, as reported by Bloomberg on April 3. During the sentencing, Ramos described Dilkinska as an intelligent individual who should have known better. He emphasized that she was fully aware of the legal consequences of her actions while participating in the $4 billion Ponzi scheme. Ramos expressed his confusion as to why Dilkinska did not leave the scheme before it was exposed.
Dilkinska previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in a Manhattan federal court on November 10. Each charge carried a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, meaning she faced a potential sentence of 10 years. She is the latest OneCoin executive to face imprisonment for their involvement in the fraudulent scheme.
OneCoin, founded by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood in 2014, promised investors guaranteed returns through a fictitious cryptocurrency called “OneCoin.” However, it was later revealed that the company operated as a pyramid scheme, generating revenue by paying commissions to investors for recruiting new buyers. The scheme collapsed in 2015 after being exposed as fraudulent, but still managed to generate over $4.3 billion in revenue and record profits of nearly $3 billion between 2014 and 2016.
While Ignatova remains at large since her disappearance in October 2017, some speculate that she may have been killed following the murders of several OneCoin associates in Mexico in 2020. Greenwood, the co-founder of the scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on fraud and money laundering charges in September 2020 and was ordered to pay $300 million in restitution.