A Singapore man was fined $72,000 for operating a multi-level marketing scheme linked to the Ponzi scheme OneCoin.
On Wednesday, a 52-year old man named Fok Fook Seng of Singapore was found guilty of operating a multi-level marketing scam linked to the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme OneCoin.
Since its inception, the OneCoin crypto scam has defrauded investors of more than $4.4 billion.
According to local news outlet Channel News Asia, Fok was convicted for promoting the MLM scheme between January 2016 and June 2017 and was fined 100,000 Singapore dollars (~$72,000).
The police first pressed charges against him in April 2019 under the Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Selling Prohibition Act, which they said was the first of its kind.
Promoting and selling the scheme at large-scale events
Fok successfully managed to promote his MLM scheme through online seminars he conducted on his Facebook page OneLife One World Team Singapore. The police said that Fok also promoted his scheme at large-scale events to get more buyers.
The MLM scheme sold packages of online education courses that came along with free “promotional tokens.” The scammers convinced the buyers that they could use the free tokens to mine more OneCoin.
The scheme had a referral program that would allow participants to receive commissions if more people bought the package through their referral. They were also to receive commissions if their referred participants would bring in more people.
After one year of rigorously refering the scheme through his main account, Fok and his team were able to sign up 1,180 members across Singapore and other countries, the police said in their statement.
The court proceedings are still ongoing for Fok’s partner who was charged with the same offense.
