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A group of investors who had filed a class-action lawsuit against some of the top executives at OneCoin and other related entities has dismissed the claims in their entirety. The investors had earlier on settled with OneCoin mastermind Ruja Ignatova and her brother Konstantin Ignatov.
The OneCoin saga has been ongoing for years. Founder “Crypto Queen” Ruja is still at large and the billions of dollars she reportedly swindled from investors have yet to be recovered. While there have been arrests globally related to the scam, not much has come of them. The class action lawsuit filed by lead plaintiffs Donald Berdeaux and Christine Grablis was one of the remaining strong cases against the scammers.
Donald and Christine had dismissed some of the defendants from the claims in late September, including lawyer Mark Scott, Nicole Huesmann, and the Bank of New York Mellon. In their latest move, they have now dropped the name of OneCoin Limited, Ruja and top executives Sebastian Greenwood and Gilbert Armenta.
In their dismissal, they stated that OneCoin is a defunct entity with no assets. Additionally, the lead operator and founder, Ignatova, is still at large. Gilbert and Sebastian have been apprehended and remain in police custody and have been charged separately for their role in the global scam.
In their court filings, the plaintiffs stated, “Plaintiffs have concluded that the dismissal of Mark Scott, David Pike, Nicole Huesmann and Bank of New York Mellon Corporation from this Action has rendered this litigation untenable and no longer a productive use of judicial resources, due largely to the fact that the remaining defendants all appear to be essentially judgment proof…”
The plaintiffs expressed their belief that it was in the best interest of judicial efficiency to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice, as “no class has yet been certified, no payment or monetary inducement has been offered or promised to Plaintiffs or Plaintiffs’ counsel, and voluntary dismissal without prejudice at this stage does not bind any putative/absent class claimant other than the named Plaintiffs.”
While the billions of dollars lost to OneCoin have yet to be recovered, a British attorney last month pointed authorities to digital wallets hosted in Seychelles. As CoinGeek reported, the attorney claimed that the BTC stash on these wallets belonged to Ruja and is now worth over $10 billion.
Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—a from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, ShapeShift, Coinbase, Ripple and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.
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