Episode one in every of Netflix’s new Cash: Defined mini-series options OneCoin and BitConnect.
Each are MLM Ponzi schemes that bilked traders out of billions of {dollars}.
Cash: Defined cites OneCoin and BitConnect as a part of a phase exploring know-how making proliferation of scams simpler.
The notorious Carlos Mattos BitConnect occasion footage is proven on the display screen however, apart from utilizing it to segue into crypto Ponzi schemes, Cash: Defined doesn’t go into particulars.
OneCoin nonetheless received its personal mini expose.
Cash: Defined begins with an introduction of Ruja Ignatova (proper) and her notorious “bitcoin killer” speech.
Footage from the Wembley Stadium 2016 occasion performs, emphasizing Ignatova’s use of techniques utilized by scammers lined earlier within the episode.
Prime OneCoin net-winner Igor Alberts and his spouse Andrea Cimbala get a point out, as among the folks Ignatova “tricked” into selling OneCoin.
Can’t say I agree with the phrasing. Alberts stole thousands and thousands by OneCoin and the corporate solely ever had as soon as income, new funding.
After OneCoin he then went on to rip-off folks out of much more thousands and thousands by DagCoin, a OneCoin clone began up by former OneCoin scammers.
Cash: Defined’s OneCoin phase performs by the lead as much as the Ponzi scheme’s 2017 collapse.
However when the day got here when folks would be capable of flip OneCoin into money, and turn out to be wealthy past their wildest desires, Ruja was nowhere to be discovered.
The crypto queen vanished into skinny air. She’d made the entire thing up.
Subsequent Cash: Defined goes over “the warning indicators” main as much as OneCoin’s collapse.
A 2015 CoinTelegraph article is cited as one of many earliest examples of a OneCoin warning signal.
An entire 12 months earlier in 2014, BehindMLM reviewed OneCoin and appropriately recognized it as a Ponzi scheme.
Regulatory warnings towards OneCoin are additionally introduced up – in addition to their dismissal by the OneCoin cult-mind.
However to many traders, these warnings didn’t matter.
Thanks to a different tactic: Insist your rip-off is unquestionably not a rip-off.
Footage of Ruja Ignatova performs, once more from the 2016 UK occasion, declaring on stage to regulators that OneCoin is ‘essentially the most clear, strongest and most authorized cryptocurrency on the market.’
In fact none of that was true.
Subsequent Cash: Defined transitions to the US prison lawsuits. Confusingly, Cash: Defined flashes a screenshot of the civil class motion criticism whereas the present’s narrator introduces the prison circumstances.
The case towards Ruja is ongoing however Ruja’s brother, who took over OneCoin after she disappeared, pleaded responsible to fraud and cash laundering expenses.
A screenshot of a petition flashes up on display screen, displaying virtually 20,000 OneCoin traders demanding Konstantin Ignatov’s launch.
This leads into how victims of fraud “course of” getting scammed. Jen McAdams’ OneCoin Sufferer Help and Info Group is introduced up as one instance.
We’ll by no means know the true variety of victims harm by OneCoin.
40% of victims don’t inform anyone. Not even their pals or household.
And solely 20% report it to authorities. However these are simply estimates.
In 2019 the DOJ claimed OneCoin was a $4 billion Ponzi scheme.
Based mostly on my protection of OneCoin since 2014, I peg OneCoins victims at round 1,000,000. Precise account numbers will probably be a lot greater attributable to duplicate accounts.
Ruja Ignatova stays at massive. Ted Nuyten continues to rejoice Igor Alberts fraud by his web site Enterprise for Dwelling.
Alberts and his spouse will take to the stage at Enterprise For Dwelling’s 2021 Digital Convention occasion, to be held later this 12 months.
Evidently not one of the different thirty-two audio system thoughts being related to one of the crucial infamous MLM Ponzi net-winners of all time.
Cash:Defined debuted on Netflix on Could eleventh, 2021. The mini-series is accessible to anybody with a Netflix subscription.