William Morro has been arrested and charged by officials from the U.S. Department of Justice with bank fraud in connection with the OneCoin cryptocurrency scheme. Court documents filed on April 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York reveal that in 2016, Morro facilitated the transfer of $35 million in OneCoin-related funds from a bank account in China to one in Hong Kong. The superseding indictment further alleges that Morro moved over $6 million from accounts in Hong Kong to U.S.-controlled accounts as part of the fraud scheme.
Following his arrest, Morro voluntarily surrendered to authorities and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. He has been released pending a sentencing hearing scheduled for Aug. 1. The Justice Department has also issued a forfeiture order related to illegal assets associated with the OneCoin case.
Reports suggest a connection between Morro and Gilbert Armenta, the boyfriend of OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova. Armenta was sentenced to five years in prison in 2023 for laundering around $300 million connected to the OneCoin scheme. Morro is identified as managing partner of the Americas Group.
It remains unclear what prompted U.S. officials to file a superseding indictment against Morro approximately eight years after the alleged fraud took place. The Justice Department has previously charged several individuals involved in the OneCoin scheme, including attorney Mark Scott, former head of legal and compliance Irina Dilzinska, and co-founder Carl Sebastian Ann Greenwood. Ignatova, also known as the "Crypto Queen," faces charges in the United States but is currently a fugitive and is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Morro has retained legal representation from Mark Cohen and Jonathan Abernethy of the law firm Cohen and Gresser, according to the April 23 filing. Cohen is notable for representing Sam Bankman-Fried in a 2023 criminal trial where Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO, was convicted of seven felonies and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
OneCoin, founded in 2014, was exposed in 2015 as a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme that bilked investors out of approximately $4 billion. For Morro, the charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud carries a potential penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
