An attorney representing Irinia Dilkinska, who held the position of “head of legal and compliance” at OneCoin, has requested that she be given credit for the time she has already served for her involvement in the cryptocurrency scheme.
In a filing made on March 20 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, John Buza submitted a memorandum to the judge, asking for leniency in Dilkinska’s sentencing. In November 2023, the former compliance chief of OneCoin pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Buza stated, “I respectfully argue that a sentence exceeding the time already served would be excessive. Ms. Dilkinska’s unique role in this case, combined with the dire circumstances she currently faces, all point to a sentence of time served as the appropriate outcome.”
Dilkinska admitted to laundering money for OneCoin, which was founded in 2014 by co-founders Karl Sebastian Greenwood and Ruja Ignatova, also known as the ‘Cryptoqueen.’ The fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme was exposed in 2015, resulting in investors losing approximately $4 billion.
In September 2023, Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $300 million in restitution to the victims of OneCoin. Ignatova, however, remained at large at the time of this article’s publication.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, Dilkinska’s guilty plea could result in a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. In January, Mark Scott, a lawyer for OneCoin who was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in November 2019, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Dilkinska’s legal team submitted letters from her friends and family before her sentencing. Buza highlighted her good behavior during her time in jail and emphasized her role as a “loving wife and mother,” arguing that any sentence longer than time served “would be a grave injustice.”
In March, Judge Edgardo Ramos gave a time-served sentence to Konstantin Ignatov, the brother of the Cryptoqueen, after he spent 34 months in prison. Ignatov had pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud in 2019.