According to leading chinese website Sixthtone.com:
“Police in central China’s Hunan province recently cracked a digital currency pyramid scheme crime involving 15 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) and arrested 119 suspects, a local television station reported Monday.
Founded by a Bulgarian woman, Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin entered China in September 2014. Though it is promoted as a cryptocurrency, it operates a private blockchain, unlike popular rivals like bitcoin, which uses a transparent public ledger.
In December of last year, the Zhuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Hunan ruled that OneCoin was an illegal pyramid scheme — a multilevel marketing business that raises profits primarily by recruiting new investors. The verdict also revealed that the organization had charged membership fees of 1,000 to 280,000 yuan. Law enforcement confiscated more than 1.6 billion yuan from the criminal network.
The phenomenal growth of cryptocurrencies over the past few years has attracted millions of investors while also creating opportunities for criminals to take advantage of hype around the technology.
Zhuzhou police were tipped off about OneCoin as early as March 2016, and in December the same year, state broadcaster China Central Television warned the public that OneCoin was one of more than 60 virtual currencies that exploited the concepts of blockchain technology