Singapore Man Found Guilty Of Promoting OneCoin
- The 52-year old man has been fined $72,000.
- Using a referral program similar to pyramid schemes, the man and his team were able to sign up 1,180 people from Singapore and other countries.
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A 52-year old man from Singapore has been found guilty of promoting the Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scheme OneCoin, local news outlet Channel News Asia reported on 2 July.
According to the publication, the man named Fok Fook Seng was convicted and fined 100,000 Singapore dollars (around $72,000) on Wednesday, for promoting the OneCoin Ponzi scheme between January 2016 and June 2017. The Singapore Police Force first pressed charges against the man in April 2019, which made him the first person to be charged under the Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Selling (Prohibition) Act.
In order to get more buyers, the person in question used to advertise the Ponzi scheme at large-scale events, and also conduct online seminars on his Facebook page, “OneLife One World Team Singapore”, to promote OneCoin. Fok and his accomplices used an MLM scheme model, where they sold educational packages with free “promotional tokens”, which buyers could use for “mining” the OneCoin cryptocurrency.
In addition, the scheme had a referral program similar to pyramid schemes, where participants would receive commissions if people bought the package through their referral, and an additional commission if their referred participants brought in more people. Using this model, Fok and his team were able to sign up 1,180 people from Singapore and other countries in around one year of referring.
Though Fok has already been found guilty, the court proceedings for his partner as still ongoing. This is not the first time that people connected to OneCoin have been found guilty of conducting money laundering and fraud. Last year in October, OneCoin co-founder Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to participation in the multi-billion dollar fraud. A month later, OneCoin’s lawyer, Mark Scott, was also found guilty, this time for laundering $400 million on behalf of Ruja Ignatova, the other co-founder of the Ponzi scheme.
- Karl Greenwood, co-founder of the OneCoin crypto pyramid scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and ordered to pay back the $300 million he made in commissions.
- Greenwood was the “global master distributor and the leader of the MLM (multi-level marketing) network” during his time in OneCoin, earning him 5% of all monthly sales.
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- On Thursday, Konstantin Ignatov settled with plaintiffs Donald Berdeaus and Christine Grablis, the representatives of OneCoin investors.
- Konstantin is no longer facing 90 years of prison time.
- David Pike’s trial, who is allegedly linked to the OneCoin scheme, was postponed until 12 January 2020.
- Pike has been accused of having made materially false statements in front of special agents from the FBI and the IRS.