A federal appeals court in Manhattan has upheld the 10-year prison sentence of Mark Scott, a former partner at the law firm Locke Lord, for his involvement in a nearly $400 million cryptocurrency fraud.
Scott was convicted in 2019 over money laundering and bank fraud conspiracy charges and as per the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, there was enough evidence to support the conviction.
In May, one of Scott’s defense team members had claimed that his trial was unfair due to “lies under Oath”. Scott was found guilty of his involvement in the OneCoin cryptocurrency scam. Besides his 10-year prison sentence, he was ordered to give up over $392 million, several bank accounts, a yacht, and two Porsches.
Prosecutors claim Scott met OneCoin creator Ruja Ignatova, a German citizen also known as the “Cryptoqueen,” in 2015 and began setting up bogus investment firms to launder millions of dollars in criminal profits in 2016. Scott said he supplied Ignatova with legal counsel and was unaware OneCoin was a fraud.
Scott was an international mergers & acquisitions and private equity partner at Locke Lord from June 2015 until September 2016. A representative for the company previously said that Scott was only there for a short period and that they were unaware of “his individual activities outside of the firm.”
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