From crypto queen to international fugitive: OneCoin’s Ruja Ignatova disappeared with billions, leaving a thriller nonetheless unsolved.
For eight years, the world has speculated concerning the destiny of Ruja Ignatova: the so-called “Cryptoqueen” who vanished with billions after pitching OneCoin, a traditional Ponzi scheme, forsaking a path of lies, lawsuits, and a thriller that refuses to die.
Crypto.information spoke with those that have dug deep into her story to get their tackle the place she may be now.
Shortly on her background as context: born in Might 1980 in Bulgaria, Ruja Ignatova moved to Germany together with her household on the age of ten, settling in Schramberg, Baden-Württemberg. She pursued increased schooling with distinction, incomes a doctorate in personal worldwide regulation from the College of Konstanz in 2005. She even had a quick tutorial stint on the College of Oxford.
Earlier than rising to infamy because the “Cryptoqueen,” Ignatova labored at McKinsey & Firm as a advisor. Nonetheless, her enterprise ventures quickly took a questionable flip. In 2012, she and her father, Plamen Ignatov, have been convicted of fraud in Germany related to the acquisition and subsequent chapter of a agency.
“The subsequent Bitcoin”
It is probably not broadly identified, however OneCoin wasn’t Ignatova’s first enterprise into crypto.
In 2013, she was concerned in a multi-level advertising rip-off referred to as BigCoin. Stories indicate that BigCoin was launched by John Ng and primarily based in Hong Kong, with the undertaking marketed utilizing the same old MLM cryptocurrency pitch: “We’re gonna be the following Bitcoin.”
It’s not clear when, however in some unspecified time in the future, the undertaking was joined by Ronnie Skold, Sebastian Greenwood, Nigel Allen, and Ruja Ignatova herself. Lengthy story brief, BigCoin didn’t make it, because it turned out to be an unusual Ponzi scheme, working and not using a blockchain in any respect. By 2014, Ignatova left BigCoin to co-found a brand new enterprise with Sebastian Greenwood, higher identified to the world as OneCoin.
Second try
Whereas Ruja Ignatova was the mastermind behind the undertaking, Sebastian Greenwood was a key determine within the operations of OneCoin. Not like Ignatova, although, Greenwood was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to twenty years in jail.
The 2 branded OneCoin as a revolutionary cryptocurrency poised to kill Bitcoin. By way of high-profile occasions and persuasive advertising, they satisfied hundreds — if not thousands and thousands — to take a position, elevating an estimated $4 billion globally. And nonetheless, like BigCoin, OneCoin additionally wasn’t working on any blockchain, which led to the undertaking’s crash three years after the launch.
On the run?
As authorities doubled down on their investigations, Ignatova vanished. In October 2017, she boarded a flight from Bulgaria, Greece and… disappeared. And not using a hint. Through the years, theories about her destiny have ranged from surgical alterations to mafia assassinations. Some studies even urged that she was murdered on a yacht within the Ionian Sea on the orders of a Bulgarian crime determine, together with her physique allegedly dismembered and discarded.
There’re additionally rumors that Ignatova would possibly really be on the run, hiding in South Africa, Dubai, and even in Russia.
German documentary filmmaker Johan von Mirbach, who directed the 2022 investigative documentary “The Cryptoqueen – The Great OneCoin Fraud” doesn’t purchase theories about Ignatova’s loss of life. In an interview with crypto.information, Mirbach stated he doesn’t imagine in theories about her loss of life, as there are too many “failed efforts to put false tracks about her whereabouts.”
“I’ve talked to safety sources from South Africa and Germany. There are investigations occurring about the place she may cover in South Africa. However no person can inform the place she actually is. She could possibly be in South Africa, in Dubai or — as you declare — in Russia or elsewhere. I’m satisfied although that she continues to be alive as there are such a lot of failed efforts to put false tracks about her whereabouts.”
Johan von Mirbach
In June 2022, the FBI placed Ignatova on its ten most needed fugitives checklist, initially providing a $100,000 reward for info resulting in her arrest. By June 2024, that bounty had grown to $5 million. Whereas Ignatova’s whereabouts aren’t clear, authorized proceedings surrounding her title proceed as much as lately.
New alternative
As an illustration, in August 2024, London’s Excessive Courtroom issued a worldwide freeze order on property linked to Ignatova and her associates following revelations that OneCoin promoters had invested in luxurious properties within the United Arab Emirates, together with a $2.7 million penthouse in Dubai.
By late 2024, investigators had centered their search on Cape City, South Africa, with hypothesis that she was dwelling in an unique enclave below a false id.
Nonetheless, new studies in November 2024 urged that Ignatova could as a substitute be hiding in Russia. In line with journalist Yordan Tsalov, who focuses on Kremlin affairs and has labored with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, Ignatova has ties to people linked to the Russian authorities.
Tsalov says these hyperlinks have been confirmed by Ignatova’s former safety adviser, Frank Schneider, a former Swiss intelligence officer who was employed by OneCoin and later interviewed by Tsalov for a BBC sequence.
Commenting on the size of the OneCoin rip-off, Mirbach says the crypto business is an “unbelievable house” not just for new companies but in addition for criminals who may achieve “far more than with easy analogue frauds.”
“They will simply scale their rip-off to a different stage. The identical mechanism that promotes and boosts on-line/digital enterprise boots on-line fraud. Mobsters may even all the time go into information unexplored and unregulated markets and observe what’s arising.”
Johan von Mirbach
Now, Mirbach says he’s simply ready for the “first AI-driven fraud that’s arising with this new alternative.”