‘Send a clear message’: law firm’s dirty tactics on behalf of $4bn crypto scam

Explosive court documents in an ongoing tribunal case have exposed how Carter-Ruck, London’s premier libel firm, tried to help the fraudsters behind the multibillion-dollar OneCoin crypto scam by throwing doubt on a police investigation. They also reveal how the firm made threats of legal action in order to “send a clear message” to whistleblowers.

The documents, disclosed after a legal challenge brought by a coalition of organisations including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), expose in shocking detail the work of the law firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of an international fraud scheme whose co-founder remains on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Offering a rare view into the cloak-and-dagger world of reputation management, they show how City lawyers and public relations advisers fiercely defended OneCoin – since revealed to be a $4bn fraud – despite concerns raised at the time by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the police and industry professionals that it may be a scam. They also show how Carter-Ruck continued to represent OneCoin despite the company’s persistent delays in disclosing crucial information about its finances, technology and organisational structure.

Carter-Ruck’s work for OneCoin began after an introduction by Frank Schneider, a former Luxembourg spymaster working on behalf of the company’s founder, Ruja Ignatova.

According to an extract of a letter from Carter-Ruck to the crypto company, OneCoin’s stated aims were clear: “remove … negative media coverage from the internet”, “publish positive media coverage instead”; and “pursue … authors, publishers, and/or internet hosts who maintain negative coverage online.”

Carter-Ruck agreed to act for OneCoin in June 2016 – and swiftly set to work on its “assault” against the company’s detractors. In a series of emails, Carter-Ruck requested documents that would establish the company’s legitimacy and support any potential defamation claim, including reports on its technical operations and annual accounts, but OneCoin either delayed handing over the documents or refused altogether on the grounds that the information was too confidential.

According to extracts of emails in the disclosed court documents, OneCoin’s first target was Coin Telegraph, a website that had attacked the company’s credibility. In an email sent on 11 July 2016, an unnamed member of Carter-Ruck wrote to OneCoin suggesting a more targeted approach.

“We would very much like to focus our assault on Coin Telegraph more precisely,” the lawyer wrote, requesting Schneider look into the background of Victoria Vaughan, Coin Telegraph’s CEO. “If Ms Vaughan … is based in England she will be much more vulnerable to legal proceedings,” the email read.

The next month, Carter-Ruck partner Claire Gill took over the OneCoin account. Despite OneCoin having provided the firm with relatively limited information, she oversaw the drafting of a legal claim against Vaughan and fired off a legal letter to the Evening Standard in August 2016 in response to the suggestion that OneCoin was a “fraudulent Ponzi scheme”.

OneCoin then set its sights on bigger targets. On 26 September 2016, the FCA published a notice about OneCoin, warning the public of serious concerns about the company. (The notice was withdrawn by the FCA in July 2017 after Carter-Ruck intervened.)

The FCA had been receiving reports about OneCoin since 2015, while the City of London police had opened a criminal investigation and moved to seize £40m of assets connected to the company.

In emails sent to OneCoin shortly after the FCA announcement, Gill suggested a change of tack: libel proceedings would require OneCoin to hand over documents that could potentially be used by the police, she explained.

Given OneCoin’s concerns, Gill instead recommended using new ways of going after the company’s critics – methods that wouldn’t obligate it to disclose anything “sensitive and confidential” about its finances or structure. These included “taking action for breach of contract against [OneCoin sellers] that have turned against you and taking action to prevent infringement of OneCoin copyright or IP rights”.

By April 2017, Carter-Ruck still appears to have been asking OneCoin for certain documents, some of which were provided to the firm with the strict condition of confidentiality. According to an extract of an email in the court filings, Gill warned that if proceedings were issued, “we will soon get to a point where secrecy is going to count against us”.

OneCoin then sent Carter-Ruck the advice of another prestigious City firm, Hogan Lovells, to bolster its claims to legitimacy. Hogan Lovells had prepared advice that concluded on the available evidence that the company was not a Ponzi scheme. However, according to court filings on behalf of the SRA, the advice did identify several elements “considered to be questionable”.

‘Put up or shut up’

As the police investigation into OneCoin continued apace, Gill met with its defence lawyers. Reporting back to OneCoin, she wrote: “We cannot necessarily stop the police taking … actions during an investigation, but we need to complain about it and give the [police] cause to doubt their investigation and to force them to question if they are on the right track.”

In 2017, the net was closing in on OneCoin. So Carter-Ruck, with the encouragement of the boutique PR firm Chelgate, duly stepped up its “assault” on the scheme’s critics.

In an email to Gill dated 12 April 2017, Chelgate founder Terence Fane-Saunders said the police probe could be defaming a company that had not been charged or convicted of anything. He asked whether the police “enjoy immunity in terms of Defamation law if they say these things within the context of an investigation? If not, then perhaps we could initiate an action? Essentially, it would be saying ‘put up, or shut up’. I think it would also cause great discomfort within the [City of London police] hierarchy.”

According to an extract of an email in the court filings, Gill did not seem so sure that issuing proceedings against a serving police officer was wise but instead said: “I wonder if, whilst we do not threaten or take action we should still put the police on notice of the fact that we know this is happening”. She suggested drawing the police’s attention to the fact that “no evidence has ever been put to our clients”.

On the same day, Fane-Saunders suggested Carter-Ruck also cast its net more widely, pursuing individuals who were causing problems for OneCoin. These included Bjorn Bjercke, a Norwegian critic of OneCoin who had attacked the company’s technological claims, and Jen McAdam, a Scottish woman who claimed to have lost her life savings to the fraud.

In his email to Gill, Fane-Saunders made clear that the eventual success of any lawsuit was much less important than the message it would be sending.

“We have to be seen to be taking strong legal action right now, even if, eventually, in the long term, we decide to drop it. It’s less about whether we are likely to win, as the impression it creates when we show that we really will take strong legal action…” Fane-Saunders wrote according to the court filings.

Three hours later, Gill replied with an email that would come back to haunt her. “I agree it seems we need to take action against Mr Bjercke, or another suitable target to send a clear message which can be used for PR purposes.”

Two weeks later, she sent the letter that would come to be central in her own prosecution. On 26 April 2017, she wrote to McAdam threatening legal action if she did not retract her criticism of OneCoin and refrain from making future allegations. McAdam, an ordinary woman who did not have legal representation, has told TBIJ of the immense distress the letter caused her.

Carter-Ruck did not ultimately sue McAdam. In October 2017, Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin’s co-founder boarded a flight and vanished. The fraud collapsed and she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. She remains at large.

Gill’s prosecution

On 6 August 2025, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) announced its intention to prosecute Gill for the letter she sent to McAdam, which the SRA alleges contained an “improper threat of litigation”. No action has ultimately been taken by the SRA over the communications sent to other whistleblowers on behalf of OneCoin.

The allegations will be subject to a hearing by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and are currently unproven. In the documents disclosed to TBIJ, Gill and Carter-Ruck deny any wrongdoing.

In a preliminary hearing last month, Carter-Ruck attempted to have its clients anonymised – despite the firm’s work for OneCoin having been widely reported – and to delay disclosure of any documents until December.

The firm claimed its emails were subject to legal privilege and could not be disclosed.

But in response to a legal challenge by Tax Policy Associates, Spotlight on Corruption, the Foreign Policy Centre, the Free Speech Union and TBIJ, the legal regulator agreed to release the requested documents, stating that privilege did not apply in cases where a lawyer was hired in “furtherance of a fraud”.

The tribunal ruled that it was satisfied “on the balance of probabilities” that Carter-Ruck was engaged in furthering a fraud. It did not make any findings of misconduct against Gill, which was not the topic of that hearing.

In its case against Gill, the SRA claims: “The litigation that was threatened in the 26 April 2017 letter sent to Jennifer McAdam was for the sole or dominant purpose of reassuring OneLife/OneCoin members and sending a strong PR message.

“[But] the message was false. A claim could not have been pursued beyond the initial stage because OneCoin had repeatedly failed to provide the fundamental information and/or documentation to address the truth of the allegations made by Ms McAdam and numerous others.”

The regulator concluded that Gill should face prosecution.

Gill’s 46-page defence argues that her letter to McAdam was standard and professionally appropriate. She says that when she sent it, she was not aware of anything that would have rendered the defamation claim “improper”.

She says the letter truthfully conveyed the client’s instructions and that it is a lawyer’s duty to provide legal representation “unless they know for a fact that what their client is telling them is untrue”.

Central to her defence is that she did not know that OneCoin was a fraud. Although she was aware of allegations of criminality, she was also aware of the “strong possibility” that those allegations might not be true, a position that she argued meant she “remained objective, in accordance with her professional duty”.

She also says it is “entirely proper” for a lawyer to advise their client in a way that will protect them in criminal inquiries, including avoiding the disclosure of documents.

Taking aim at the SRA’s investigation, she further argues that it was her constitutional role as solicitor to send the letter rather than to restrict OneCoin’s access to justice.

According to Carter-Ruck, the investigation – which began in 2020 – “unnecessarily occasioned immense distress” to Gill, with the firm claiming that the SRA’s conduct amounts to a “disproportionate interference with her article 8 right to respect for her private life”.

Frank Schneider, who is a fugitive from justice since June 2023, could not be reached for comment.

Chelgate said it had been initially advised that police interest in OneCoin was “unmerited and falsely based” and that it stopped working for the company after becoming increasingly concerned about its legitimacy.

Gill’s application to dismiss the case on the basis that there is no case to answer will take place in December.