Crypto Queen - Follow the money - Fenero described the payment as a "loan for CryptoReal."

Ruja Ignatova, the crypto-queen, claimed to have invented a cryptocurrency, OneCoin and took in more than $4 billion from investors worldwide. But the currency was fake, and the operation was a pyramid scheme, U.S. authorities say.

In March 2019, the U.S. Justice Department charged Ignatova with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. Ignatova is a fugitive, and her whereabouts are unknown.

In an email obtained by prosecutors,

• Ignatova described her thoughts on an “exit strategy” for OneCoin. The first option: “Take the money and run and blame someone else for this ...”

FinCEN Files reveal:-

In February 2017, the Bank of New York Mellon reported more than $137 million in suspicious payments by a network of OneCoin-associated companies. The bank wrote that the companies appeared to be engaged in “layering” — a technique used to disguise the source of illicit funds by routing it through multiple transactions.

Buzzfeed shared the FinCEN files with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which showed one particular transaction in 2016 where Fenero Equity Investments, a British Virgin Islands-based company, wired approximately $30 million from its account at DMS Bank & Trust, a Cayman-based bank, to BNY Mellon.

https://projects.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/confidential-clients/#/en/ruja-ignatova/transaction

Fenero described the payment as a "loan for CryptoReal" – an investment trust set up by OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova, who has not been seen since late 2017.

In a SAR filed at the time, BNY Mellon's compliance team said Fenero often received wires from shell entities linked to OneCoin. It sent the money to Hong Kong's DBS Bank, which was credited to a local company called Barta Holdings.

Emails seized by U.S. authorities last year show Mark Scott, the New York attorney convicted last year of laundering $400 million for OneCoin, arranged the $30 million loan from Fenero to allegedly purchase an oilfield from Barta Holdings. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/11/22/jury-convicts-crypto-ponzi-scheme-onecoins-lawyer-on-fraud-charges/

Special agent Kurt Hafer, attached to the New York Attorney's office, said

• "I believe that Scott arranged the $30 million purported 'loan' from Fenero to Barta to launder OneCoin Ltd. proceeds to CC-2 [OneCoin's co-founder],"

Further, the seized emails show that the loan was never repaid and that one of the OneCoin co-founders spent $10 million of the amount sent to Barta Holdings.

A BNY Mellon spokesperson told ICIJ the bank fully complied with existing financial regulations and took its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system seriously. By law, they said, the bank could not comment on specific SARs. Likewise, DMS Bank said it took its legal responsibilities for helping to combat fraud and money laundering "extremely seriously."

Source

https://projects.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/confidential-clients/#/en/ruja-ignatova/

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/09/21/fincen-files-bny-mellon-processed-137m-for-entities-linked-to-onecoin/

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/11/22/jury-convicts-crypto-ponzi-scheme-onecoins-lawyer-on-fraud-charges/