Re: Can anyone supply (No reward)
I highly recommend listening to the BBC podcast linked the article before passing judgment on the "totally stupid tw*ts" who got taken. The scheme played upon the desperation that spun out of the 2008 financial crisis (where, as you might recall, banks got bailed out and everyone else got wrecked).
The scheme (I use the more pejorative American sense of the word) was a classic "affinity fraud," hatched out of the hustle and bustle of the early Bitcoin rush, when Bitcoin went from nothing to hundreds, if not thousands, of illusory dollars in the space of a couple of years, and who wanted to miss out on the Next Big Thing, especially when hustled by a charismatic figure like Dr Ruja, as she came to be known. She wouldn't lie to them. Cult leaders never do.
OneCoin was billed as a way out of financial insecurity and desperate people often do desperate, irrational things. To call them stupid is condescending at best.
OneCoin built a belief system, not much different in structure from most cults, with a lot of "la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you" denial of any inconvenient fact. Just try getting into an argument with a Flat Earth believer some time. Or a member of any religion. The fact that their beliefs contradict the observable laws of the universe is completely irrelevant to them. It puts them in the "in group" that "knows" the true facts and everyone else is either deluded or a "hater."
I won't name names but look around and you'll likely see parallels everywhere.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
