Ex-Coral Gables attorney begins 10-year sentence for global crypto fraud
A Coral Gables attorney who played a central role in a billion-dollar global cryptocurrency scam has started his 10-year sentence at a Miami federal prison earlier this month after a lengthy trial and appeals process.
Federal prosecutors had indicted the attorney, Mark S. Scott, in New York in 2018 for money laundering and bank fraud. He was convicted and sentenced six years later but was initially incarcerated at home with an ankle monitor pending his appeals.
Prosecutors had charged Scott, a former partner at Locke Lord, a Brickell law firm now called Troutman Pepper Locke, for his role in abetting Ruja Ignatova — a Bulgarian émigré to Germany, once dubbed the “Queen of Cryptocurrency” — and her company OneCoin.
The Miami Herald has previously reported on how OneCoin was later investigated in multiple countries for perpetrating a Ponzi scheme worth $4 billion, $400 million of which Scott helped launder.
Prosecutors alleged that private equity investment funds Scott set up in 2016 in the British Virgin Islands received the illicit funds.
“He cleaned the fraud money that he knew was dirty by setting up phony investment funds and lying to banks and other financial institutions to make it look like the OneCoin fraud proceeds were actually profits from legitimate businesses that had nothing to do with OneCoin,” assistant U.S. attorney Julieta V. Lozano told the jury.
These firms all had the word “Fenero” in their names and federal prosecutors referred to them as the “Fenero Funds.” Scott administered all the “Fenero Funds” via an offshore British Virgin Islands firm and a Florida company, MSS International Consultants.
Lozano alleged that Scott made numerous transfers out of the bank accounts held by the firms in investments that were actually “dummy transactions used as cover for moving OneCoin fraud money back to Ruja [Ignatova].” Assistant U.S. attorney Nicholas Folly also alleged that “Ruja paid Mark Scott $50 million” for his services.
Federal prison records show that Scott is currently an inmate at FCI Miami, a low-security federal prison near Zoo Miami.
Federal judge Edgardo Ramos also ordered several luxury properties that Scott bought with the illicit funds to be forfeited to the federal government. Scott has to forfeit more than $5 million in two dozen bank accounts, two Porsches and a seven-bedroom seaside mansion in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
OneCoin’s founder, Ignatova, faces charges of wire and securities fraud and money laundering, but she mysteriously disappeared in late 2017. Her last known footprint was a flight from Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, to Athens in Greece.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has listed her among its top 10 Most Wanted criminals and is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on her whereabouts.