A Coral Gables attorney fights his Bar suspension and $50 million fraud conviction
The Florida Supreme Court’s suspension of Coral Gables attorney Mark Scott, following November’s fraud conviction in Manhattan federal court, began Wednesday. To be determined: Length of suspension and sentence.
Scott is not conceding his career or his freedom.
His disciplinary page on the Florida Bar site includes an unsigned petition for disciplinary revocation without leave to reapply for admission, essentially a request to be permanently disbarred. Scott refused to sign that and retained Herman Russomanno III, son of the former Florida Bar president, to represent him in the Bar discipline matters.
“The Bar sent me a package offering that course of action,” Scott said Thursday by phone. “I’m not interested in that. I’m still fighting for my life in New York without any reason to give up.”
New York is where Scott is appealing his conviction on conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges. Prosecutors said Scott made $50 million from helping launder $400 million of white collar loot gained by OneCoin, a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme started by Ruja Ignatova in 2014.
The Justice Department says Scott met Ignatova in 2015 and started laundering money for her in 2016. Ignatova disappeared in 2017. Her brother, Konstantin Ignatov, pleaded guilty to money laundering and fraud charges and testified against Scott.
After Scott’s conviction, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a release, “Mark S. Scott, an equity partner at a prominent international law firm, used his specialized knowledge as an experienced corporate lawyer to set up fake investment funds, which he used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud proceeds.
“He lined his pockets with over $50 million of the money stolen from victims of the OneCoin scheme. Scott, who boasted of earning ‘50 by 50’ now faces 50 years in prison for his crimes.”
Scott said the government miscast him as “a key player” in OneCoin’s shenanigans.
He is appealing the bank fraud conviction because “there’s no evidence in the trial record” of it. As for the money laundering, he says, “the government has not shown a fraud in the United States. There are no ties to any of the U.S. victims.”
Prosecutors say Scott bought, among other things, a Ferrari, several Porsches and three seaside homes in Cape Cod with the money. Miami-Dade County property records say Scott and wife, Lidia Kolesnikova Scott, live in the Coral Gables condominium he bought in 2015 for $1.58 million.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 10:44 AM.
