From crypto queen to world fugitive: OneCoin’s Ruja Ignatova disappeared with billions, leaving a thriller nonetheless unsolved.
Desk of Contents
For eight years, the sphere has speculated about the fate of Ruja Ignatova: the so-referred to as “Cryptoqueen” who vanished with billions after pitching OneCoin, a conventional Ponzi plot, leaving within the abet of a path of lies, court docket cases, and a thriller that refuses to die.
Crypto.news spoke with folks who receive dug deep into her memoir to receive their rob on the put she will be able to also very effectively be now.
Shortly on her background as context: born in May per chance per chance 1980 in Bulgaria, Ruja Ignatova moved to Germany with her family at the age of ten, settling in Schramberg, Baden-Württemberg. She pursued bigger training with distinction, incomes a doctorate in personal world law from the University of Konstanz in 2005. She even had a short academic stint at the University of Oxford.
Sooner than rising to infamy as the “Cryptoqueen,” Ignatova labored at McKinsey & Company as a educated. Then again, her industry ventures soon took a questionable turn. In 2012, she and her father, Plamen Ignatov, had been convicted of fraud in Germany linked to the acquisition and subsequent economic extinguish of an organization.
“The next Bitcoin”
It must also just no longer be broadly known, however OneCoin wasn’t Ignatova’s first mission into crypto.
In 2013, she became serious a couple of multi-stage advertising rip-off referred to as BigCoin. Reviews demonstrate that BigCoin became launched by John Ng and basically based mostly in Hong Kong, with the mission marketed the utilize of the typical MLM cryptocurrency pitch: “We’re gonna be the following Bitcoin.”
It’s no longer obvious when, however at some level, the mission became joined by Ronnie Skold, Sebastian Greenwood, Nigel Allen, and Ruja Ignatova herself. Long memoir short, BigCoin didn’t assemble it, as it turned out to be an typical Ponzi plot, working with out a blockchain at all. By 2014, Ignatova left BigCoin to co-learned a aloof mission with Sebastian Greenwood, better known to the sphere as OneCoin.
Second try
Whereas Ruja Ignatova became the mastermind within the abet of the mission, Sebastian Greenwood became a key resolve within the operations of OneCoin. Unlike Ignatova, though, Greenwood became arrested in 2018 and sentenced to two decades in penal complex.
The two branded OneCoin as a revolutionary cryptocurrency poised to abolish Bitcoin. Thru excessive-profile occasions and persuasive advertising, they convinced hundreds — if no longer hundreds of hundreds — to make investments, raising an estimated $4 billion globally. And nonetheless, admire BigCoin, OneCoin also wasn’t working on any blockchain, which resulted in the mission’s break three years after the birth.
On the chase?
As authorities doubled down on their investigations, Ignatova vanished. In October 2017, she boarded a flight from Bulgaria, Greece and… disappeared. With out a hint. Over the years, theories about her fate receive ranged from surgical alterations to mafia assassinations. Some experiences even in actual fact helpful that she became murdered on a yacht within the Ionian Sea on the orders of a Bulgarian crime resolve, with her body allegedly dismembered and discarded.
There’re also rumors that Ignatova can also very effectively be on the chase, hiding in South Africa, Dubai, or even in Russia.
German documentary filmmaker Johan von Mirbach, who directed the 2022 investigative documentary “The Cryptoqueen – The Large OneCoin Fraud” doesn’t buy theories about Ignatova’s death. In an interview with crypto.news, Mirbach mentioned he doesn’t deem in theories about her death, as there are too many “failed efforts to lay false tracks about her whereabouts.”
“I receive talked to security sources from South Africa and Germany. There are investigations occurring about the put she will be able to also hide in South Africa. Nonetheless no one can portray the put she if truth be told is. She can also very effectively be in South Africa, in Dubai or — as you express — in Russia or in other locations. I’m convinced though that she is nonetheless alive as there are such a good deal of failed efforts to lay false tracks about her whereabouts.”
Johan von Mirbach
In June 2022, the FBI placed Ignatova on its ten most the largest fugitives list, first and foremost offering a $100,000 reward for facts main to her arrest. By June 2024, that bounty had grown to $5 million. Whereas Ignatova’s whereabouts aren’t obvious, comely proceedings surrounding her name proceed as a lot as at the moment time.
New opportunity
For event, in August 2024, London’s Excessive Courtroom issued a global freeze express on resources linked to Ignatova and her mates following revelations that OneCoin promoters had invested in luxurious properties within the United Arab Emirates, at the side of a $2.7 million penthouse in Dubai.
By late 2024, investigators had focused their search on Cape Town, South Africa, with speculation that she became living in an exclusive enclave below a false identity.
Then again, aloof experiences in November 2024 in actual fact helpful that Ignatova can also just as an different be hiding in Russia. Per journalist Yordan Tsalov, who focuses on Kremlin affairs and has labored with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-basically based mostly investigative journalism community, Ignatova has ties to folks linked to the Russian government.
Tsalov says these hyperlinks had been confirmed by Ignatova’s ancient security adviser, Frank Schneider, a ancient Swiss intelligence officer who became hired by OneCoin and later interviewed by Tsalov for a BBC series.
Commenting on the scale of the OneCoin rip-off, Mirbach says the crypto industry is an “amazing dwelling” no longer upright for aloof firms however also for criminals who can also receive “grand bigger than with easy analogue frauds.”
“They’ll upright scale their rip-off to 1 other stage. The identical mechanism that promotes and boosts on-line/digital industry boots on-line fraud. Mobsters can even consistently dart into news unexplored and unregulated markets and practice what’s coming up.”
Johan von Mirbach
Now, Mirbach says he’s upright ready for the “first AI-pushed fraud that is coming up with this aloof opportunity.”
