Oscar-winner Kate Winslet is about to star in a movie about the so-called cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova, who is behind the massive OneCoin scam that was finally busted this year. Investors in OneCoin lost 5,15 billion dollars.
The movie will be called Fake! and will be produced for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. Scott Z. Burns will direct the movie and Winslet herself will produce it.
As for the OneCoin Ponzi scam, it was founded in Bulgaria back in 2014 and it worked as a MLM scheme. Investors were offered to purchase a “revolutionary” new crypto currency that Ruja Ignatova and her cronies toted as a “Bitcoin killer”. The scammers managed to attract over 5 billion dollars in global investments over the course of only a few years – people from US to China to the UK gave their money to Ignatova.
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Last I heard about Ruja Ignatova, she was seen in the company of members of the Russian mob. Then she disappeared. I wonder what ending the movie will give her.

The owner of a small Bulgarian cryptocurrency exchange called RGcoins, Rosen Iossifov will be prosecuted for being involved in a sophisticated scam that involved stealing from US citizens and then laundering the stolen funds through cryptocurrency. A federal judge convicted him in the State of Kentucky on  counts of conspiracy to commit racketeering and money laundering.
US authorities began investigating RGcoins following the suspicion that the Bulgarian had aided a gang of Romanian money launderers.
According to official court documents, between 2014 and 2015, Iossifov and his accomplices conducted phishing attacks so they could victimize about 900 American citizens. They used fake ads on sites like eBay and Craigslist to promote expensive assets that did not actually exist.
People purchased products but never received them and the Romanian gang, which consisted of 14 people, used the crypto exchange to convert it to Bitcoin, thus committing money laundering.
Iossifov now faces a sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250k, and three years of supervised release.
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I am glad the criminals have been caught and are facing justice. I wonder whether people will get their money back though.

US authorities charged the perpetrators behind the global crypto ponzi scheme AirBit Club with fraud and money laundering. That became clear from an announcement issued by the US Department of Justice. The defendants have allegedly scammed victims all over the world out of tens of millions of USD. They were arrested in Panama and will likely be extradited to the US.
According to information released by the authorities, AirBit Club solicited investors to subscribe to their investment packages by promising guaranteed daily returns from cryptocurrency mining and trading. The money they received was supposedly used for cryptocurrency mining equipment and for  affiliates. If members of the scam referred other people to AirBit Club, they got commissions. That is your typical Ponzi scheme, really.
Unsurprisingly, no crypto mining or trading ever took place. Funds invested by victims were used for the purchase of luxury goods, real estate and fancy presentations to lure in more victims of the scam.
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Cryptocurrency Ponzi scammers that tried to disappear in Panama, it doesn't get any more cliche than that.

Cryptocurrency trading may be banned in mainland China, but the Hong Kong financial regulator Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) just issued its first cryptocurrency exchange license to OSL Digital Securities, a unit of Fidelity- backed BC group.
The company applies for a license back in November 2019 due to the new rules requiring exchanges to legalize their businesses that were adopted in Hong Kong last year.
OSL Digital is not the only company who applies for such license, but it is, indeed, the first to receive it.
The CEO of BC Group issued a statement, saying that one of the benefits of being licensed is that regulated institutions will be able to reduce their risk by being able to engage with other regulated entities – the crypto exchanges.
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This is good news, but I question how long it will last, considering China’s determination to unify Hong Kong’s legislation with its own.

India keeps flip-flopping on the cryptocurrency issue. First cryptos was banned, then they weren’t banned, now they are preparing to ban them. Again.
The Indian government is preparing to ban all cryptos, according to new reports. The government is conducting a consultation with the ministries of law, information and technology and with the Reserve Bank of India. They are preparing a framework to use to ban cryptocurrency trading in the country.
Apparently there are ideas to include a $3.3 million fine and a ten-year prison sentence from crypto dealers.
Crypto companies and exchanges have been seeking to move out of the country and some have ended their services.
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Russia too intended to ban cryptos, complete with criminalizing them, and they legalized them instead. Let’s see how this process will develop in India.

After a brief consideration whether not only to ban and even criminalize cryptocurrencies, Russia did a total one-eighty and legalized them instead.
The Russian Duma (that’s the Russian parliament) categorized cryptocurrencies as a set of electronic data that can be used for payments and/or investments. Not much will change for cryptocurrency traders in Russia now – cryptos will be maintained by nodes  operators of their respective blockchain systems. They won’t have a centralized responsible party either.
The new legislation will come into effect on the 1st January next year. The Russian Central Bank will become the main overseer and regulator of new cryptocurrencies in the country.
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Thankfully, that means that Russian exchanges should be able to continue to work without issues. I hope.

The first digital collector coin has appeared on the market, issued by the Lithuanian Central Bank. The coin is state-backed, is called LBCOIN, it is based on blockchain technology and consists of six digital tokens and one physical collector coin.
 
The silver collector coins are coined by the Lithuanian Mint, resemble a credit card and depict Lithuania’s 1918 act of independence and its 20 signatories. Each coin has a nominal value of 19.18 EUR to commemorate that date.
So far the Bank of Lithuania has issued only 4000 such coins and they can be collected after buying the digital tokens.
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I am only surprised it took this long for a bank to do this. I wonder which will be the next one to issue such a coin.

One of the co-founders of the Centra Tech ICO, Sohrab Sharma, plead guilty before the US District court in New York for scamming investors out of $25 million. Apart from Sharma, two more associates of his also plead guilty for cyber crimes.
Another co-counder, Raymon Trapani, who cooked up the entire scheme, plead guilty to nine counts of fraud last year.
The scam was conducted between July 2017 and March 2018. Investors were promised to receive a “Centra Card” which was supposed to function like a cryptocurrency debit card and was also supposed to be accepted by any vendor accepting Visa and Mastercard. To convince investors that was possible the scammers falsified licensing agreements with the above-mentioned companies, as well as with Bancorp. They also lied to investors that their company had an US license in 38 different states, was led by a CEO with 20 years of experience and a Harvard degree, and hired boxer Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled to promote them.
Mayweather and DJ Khaled were heavily fined for their participation in the scam as well.
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You would think that investors' first job would be to call Visa and Mastercard and doublecheck those licensing agreements since they intended to invest large sums of money but the scam went ahead anyway.