The ex-boyfriend of the infamous “Cryptoqueen” has been sentenced to five years in prison for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars.
by Bloomberg Law says that Gilbert Armenta, the former boyfriend of fugitive Ruja Ignatova, who is wanted for allegedly masterminding a crypto Ponzi scheme called “OneCoin,” has been sentenced to five years in prison for laundering $300 million in digital assets.
According to official court documents, Armenta was arrested in 2017 and was fully cooperative with authorities, eventually pleading guilty and helping investigators indict other bad actors as well.
“Among other things, Mr. Armenta immediately provided the investigators with access to his email accounts, and permitted the investigating agents to conduct a consent search of his business office at night to avoid any leak of the investigation.
At the time of guilty pleas several months later, the supervising prosecutors characterized Mr. Armenta’s ongoing cooperation efforts as ‘extraordinary.’ Those efforts resulted in the indictment of both co-founders of OneCoin (including the original CEO), and the subsequent CEO as well, among others…
As a direct or indirect result of his cooperation, at least 14 defendants were indicted.”
The records also indicate Armenta forfeited over $40 million and that eight people have been convicted of crimes thus far due to his cooperation.
OneCoin was launched in 2014 as an international multi-level marketing company that dubbed itself as the “Bitcoin killer,” but was eventually ousted as a scam that defrauded $4 billion from investors.
Its founder, Ignatova, disappeared in 2017 after going to Greece and is currently by many law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
