Ben Pasternak Indicted in NY; DOJ Opens OneCoin Claims

Ben Pasternak, a 26-year-old Australian entrepreneur and founder of the Solana-based marketplace Believe, was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on allegations that the platform ran a rug pull. Prosecutors and civil plaintiffs say Believe, previously called Clout, promoted a token launched as $PASTERNAK that was later rebranded to $LAUNCHCOIN and then to $BELIEVE after a sharp price decline.

Court filings allege users were told to hold losing tokens and later to migrate to a new token called $BELIEVE. Civil complaints say the platform processed more than $6 billion in trades and collected roughly $54 million in fees while many investors suffered large losses. The criminal indictment is under review in SDNY; the specific charges and any asset-forfeiture measures have not been made public.

A rug pull is a scheme in which developers promote a token to raise its price and then abandon the project or remove liquidity, causing the token to crash. The filings accuse Pasternak and others of repeatedly launching and promoting tokens, soliciting investor participation, and allowing or causing the tokens to lose most of their value.

Separately, the Department of Justice said more than $40 million in assets seized from the OneCoin scheme are available for distribution to victims through the federal Asset Forfeiture Program. That program, managed by the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics, and Forfeiture Section, has returned more than $12.5 billion to victims in prior cases.

The OneCoin operation ran roughly from 2014 through 2019 and is accused of defrauding an estimated 3.5 million people of more than $4 billion. Individuals who purchased OneCoin during that period may be eligible to file a petition for compensation. The deadline to submit claims is June 30, 2026.

U.S. prosecutors have charged defendants in the OneCoin scheme in SDNY and other jurisdictions. One alleged co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Ruja Ignatova, widely referred to as the “Cryptoqueen,” remains at large and is listed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

The Pasternak indictment and the OneCoin claims process are separate legal matters in the same federal court district. The OneCoin case involves distribution of forfeited assets to identified victims through an established claims procedure. The Pasternak matter includes criminal charges and parallel civil suits seeking damages; prosecutors have not announced whether restitution or forfeiture will be sought in that case.

Anyone who believes they qualify for OneCoin compensation should follow the DOJ’s filing instructions and submit a petition by June 30, 2026. Investors in Believe and related tokens should monitor filings in the Southern District of New York to learn whether criminal or civil proceedings will result in recoveries.