Lidia S. Kolesnikova, wife of Mark Scott, who got a prison sentence for laundering $400 million of the proceeds from fraudulent investment scheme OneCoin, asserts her interest in five luxury handbags.
Ms Kolesnikova acknowledges that her husband committed crimes but nevertheless challenges the Court order directing Mr Scott to forfeit a money judgment in the amount of $392,940,000, several bank accounts, a yacht, two Porsche automobiles, and four real-estate properties.
Ms Kolesnikova challenges the forfeiture order in several aspects. The first of them is, as one might expect, her right to retain the family residence and funds in a joint bank account.
Ms Kolesnikova also asserts her interest in five luxury handbags:
- One Black Hermes Birkin Bag;
- One Orange Hermes Birkin Bag”;
- One Black Hermes purse;
- One Brown/Tan Hermes purse, and
- One Green Hermes purse.
These items are included as “substitute assets” in the Preliminary Forfeiture Order, such that the Government has conceded that it was unable to trace the purchase of these items to the proceeds of any crime.
Ms. Kolesnikova claims she possessed these handbags before Mr. Scott’s indictment in 2018, so her rights to these handbags supersede the Government’s interest and should be returned to her.
In addition to these handbags, Ms. Kolesnikova asserts her rights to her engagement ring, which was seized by the Government on the assertion that it was purchased with funds linked to the alleged criminal conduct.
In January 2024, Mark Scott was sentenced to 10 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos for laundering approximately $400 million of proceeds from the massive international fraud scheme known as “OneCoin.”
The sentencing followed Scott’s conviction on all counts at trial on November 21, 2019.
OneCoin, which began operations in 2014 and was based in Sofia, Bulgaria, marketed and sold a fraudulent cryptocurrency by the same name through a global multi-level-marketing (MLM) network.
OneCoin began operating in the U.S. in or around 2015. The OneCoin scheme was one of the largest fraud schemes ever perpetrated. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, the scheme took in more than $4 billion from at least 3.5 million victims.
Scott, who was employed between June 2015 and September 2016 as an equity partner at Locke Lord LLP, a prominent international law firm, was first introduced to OneCoin’s co-founder, Ruja Ignatova, in September 2015.
Beginning in early 2016, Scott formed a series of fake private equity investment funds in the British Virgin Islands known as the “Fenero Funds.” Scott then disguised incoming transfers of approximately $400 million into the Fenero Funds as investments from “wealthy European families,” when in fact the money represented proceeds of the OneCoin fraud scheme.
He layered the money through various Fenero Fund bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and the Republic of Ireland. He subsequently transferred the funds back to Ignatova and other OneCoin associated entities, this time disguising the transfers as outbound investments from the Fenero Funds.
As part of the scheme, Scott and his co-conspirators lied to banks and other financial institutions all over the world, including to banks in the U.S., to cause those institutions to make transfers of OneCoin proceeds and evade anti-money laundering procedures.
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