The former boyfriend of Ponzi scheme Onecoin mastermind Ruja Ignatova has been sentenced to five years in prison. The sentence is for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars worth of proceeds from the notorious crypto scam that defrauded investors worldwide.
Ruja’s ex-boyfriend was sentenced for money laundering related to Onecoin.
Gilbert Armenta, the ex-boyfriend of crypto pyramid Onecoin founder Ruja Ignatova, has been sentenced in the United States, Bloomberg Law reported. . According to court documents, he helped launder $300 million in proceeds from one of the largest Ponzi schemes in crypto history.
In 2018, Armenta, now 59, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and extortion, all in connection with Onecoin. He cooperated with prosecutors in the fraud investigation for approximately two years, but later committed other crimes and violated the agreement.
Onecoin, founded in 2014, operated as a global multi-level marketing network and was based on a cryptocurrency that, despite being advertised as a “bitcoin killer,” did not actually exist Onecoin’s own documents show that more than 3 million people have invested more than $4 billion in Onecoin since 2016.
Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian-born German national, disappeared in October 2017 while boarding a Ryanair flight in Sofia bound for Athens. Still at large, she is wanted by Interpol, Europol, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Her brother and co-founder Constantine, detained in Los Angeles in 2019, pleaded guilty to charges related to Onecoin and sought witness protection in the U.S. In December 2022, another co-founder, Carl Sebastian Greenwood, a British and Swedish national pleaded guilty to complicity in the fraud.
Crypto Pyramid Mastermind Ruja Ignatova Still Missing
Information about Ignatova’s whereabouts and activities regularly surfaces in media reports. Last July, the leading Greek daily Katimerini revealed that Hellenic police, acting on information indicating that she was in the country and meeting with unidentified persons, were attempting to locate and arrest her.
In January of this year, British media revealed that a $15 million apartment purchased by the “missing crypto queen” through a Guernsey-based company was for sale. A BBC reporton the caserevealed that the Kensington penthouse was listed with the approval of German authorities.
Prosecutors in Bielefeld charged Martin Breidenbach, a German lawyer who worked for Ignatova, with money laundering for transferring €20 million (over $21 million) to purchase a four-bedroom apartment.In October, Onecoin appeared in court along with two related parties and
