‘Cryptoqueen’ Boyfriend Gets Five Years in OneCoin Scam (1)

The former boyfriend of fugitive “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova, who is accused of orchestrating the global Ponzi scheme tied to OneCoin, was sentenced to five years in prison for laundering $300 million in proceeds of the fraud.

Gilbert Armenta, 59, pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring to commit wire fraud, money laundering and extortion in connection with OneCoin, a $4 billion multilevel marketing scam based on a phony cryptocurrency. Armenta cooperated with prosecutors for two years in unwinding the fraud, but then committed new crimes, prompting the government to seek a longer sentence.

Armenta “provided extraordinary cooperation to the government, then ...