Ruja Ignatova strode onto the stage in a flowing burgundy ball robe adorned with black sparkles. Beams of sunshine flashed, fireballs erupted and Alicia Keys’ “Girl on Fire” blared by way of the audio system.
“Looks like a girl, but she’s a flame. So bright, she can burn your eyes – better look the other way,” the music crooned as a beaming Ignatova thanked the cheering crowd at London’s Wembley Arena.
That was in June 2016, when cryptocurrency was an rising buzzword and buyers have been scrambling to money in. Ignatova referred to as herself the “Cryptoqueen” and touted her firm, OneCoin, as a profitable rival to Bitcoin within the rising cryptocurrency market.
“In two years, nobody will speak about Bitcoin anymore,” she mentioned, as buyers applauded and whistled.
Sixteen months later, Ignatova boarded a airplane in Sofia, Bulgaria, and vanished. She hasn’t been seen since.
Authorities say OneCoin was a pyramid scheme that defrauded individuals out of greater than $4 billion as Ignatova satisfied buyers within the US and across the globe to throw fistfuls of money at her firm. Federal prosecutors describe OneCoin as one of many largest worldwide fraud schemes ever perpetrated.
She is now one of many FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives, alongside accused gang leaders and murderers, and is the one lady presently on that checklist.
Of the 529 fugitives on the FBI’s checklist because it launched in 1950, she’s one in every of simply 11 girls.
Ignatova and her companions “conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars, claiming that OneCoin would be the ‘Bitcoin killer,'” US Attorney Damian Williams, New York’s high prosecutor, mentioned in a press release final month.
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“In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless … (Their) lies were designed with one goal, to get everyday people all over the world to part with their hard-earned money.”
She knew it was a rip-off from the beginning, courtroom paperwork say
Since Ignatova disappeared in October 2017, her face has been plastered on the FBI web site and throughout main news shops worldwide. She’s additionally one of the crucial wished fugitives in Europe.
At the underside of her FBI wished poster is a be aware: “Ignatova is believed to travel with armed guards and/or associates. Ignatova may have had plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance.”
The FBI says it picks fugitives for the checklist based mostly on the size of their felony information and the way harmful they might be. It additionally favours fugitives who are usually not well-known to maximise the good thing about this system’s nationwide publicity.
The bureau declined to supply extra particulars to CNN past courtroom paperwork from the US Department of Justice, which didn’t checklist an lawyer for Ignatova. “This case is an ongoing investigation. We are unable to comment beyond what has already been released publicly,” mentioned Daniel Crifo, a spokesperson for the FBI workplace in New York.
But courtroom paperwork element a mind-blowing narrative: how Ignatova and her OneCoin co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, have been allegedly conscious from the beginning that their formidable enterprise was a Ponzi scheme.
“The cryptocurrency OneCoin was established for the sole purpose of defrauding investors,” IRS Special Agent John R Tafur mentioned in a press release.
While Greenwood and Ignatova have been engaged on the idea for OneCoin, they referred to it in emails as a “trashy coin,” federal officers mentioned in courtroom paperwork. The paperwork present Greenwood described their buyers as “idiots” and “crazy” in an e mail to Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov, who additionally took half within the rip-off and assumed OneCoin management after his sister vanished, in keeping with prosecutors.
“It might not be (something) really clean or that I normally work on or even can be proud of (except with you in private when we make the money),” Ignatova wrote to Greenwood in 2014.
She additionally proposed an exit technique ought to the corporate fail, saying in a 2014 e mail to Greenwood that they need to “take the money and run and blame somebody else for this.”
From a younger age, Ignatova wished to be wealthy
Ruja Ignatova, 42, is a German citizen however was born in Bulgaria, the place her father was an engineer and her mom was a trainer.
In his guide, “The Missing Crypto Queen,” creator Jamie Bartlett detailed her rise from modest beginnings to entrepreneurial stardom.
When she was a woman, her household moved to Germany, the place Ignatova excelled as a scholar and spent her free time learning and enjoying chess, Bartlett wrote. Classmates described her as good, pushed and aloof.
Ignatova received a scholarship to a college in Konstanz, Germany, the place she met and married a fellow legislation scholar. She maintained she did not need kids, Bartlett wrote, as a result of they might get in the way in which of her buying wealth.
She additionally advised individuals she wished to be a millionaire by age 30.
“She desperately wanted to be rich, even devouring books in the early hours about how to make money,” Bartlett wrote.
After learning European legislation at Oxford University, Ignatova landed a job in Sofia as a guide for McKinsey & Company, the worldwide administration consulting agency.
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Clients trusted her and associated to her rise from humble beginnings and fierce want to be wealthy, Bartlett wrote. Her fluency in languages, together with Russian, German, English and Bulgarian, additionally helped.
Appearances mattered to Ignatova, who typically attended occasions in night robes and vibrant crimson lipstick, with diamonds dangling from her ears.
“Everything exhibited success and glamour,” Bartlett wrote. “She was obsessed with style and image.”
OneCoin allegedly promised buyers a fivefold to tenfold return
Cryptocurrencies corresponding to bitcoin are digital belongings created and managed by a world, decentralised community of computer systems as an alternative of a financial institution or authorities. Bitcoin, for instance, is “mined,” or created, by skilled crypto miners utilizing armies of servers in information centres.
It is a largely unregulated and extremely risky business, and professional opinions on the viability of crypto run the gamut. Advocates broadly envision a future during which economies run on digital currencies validated by the neighborhood of customers quite by a central financial institution. Critics dismiss it as a Ponzi scheme or, at minimal, a extremely dangerous funding.
In 2014, Ignatova and Greenwood, her co-founder, began pitching OneCoin to buyers in Europe, New York and around the globe. They hosted on-line webinars and conferences the place they urged potential buyers to deposit funds in an account that will allow the acquisition of OneCoin packages, in keeping with a federal indictment.
OneCoin operated as a multilevel advertising community during which buyers obtained commissions for recruiting others to purchase cryptocurrency packages, federal prosecutors mentioned. The packages catered to varied revenue ranges, from “starter” to “tycoon trader.”
Ignatova and her companions promised patrons a fivefold and even tenfold return on their funding, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.
A shopping for frenzy ensued. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, buyers gave OneCoin greater than $4 billion, federal prosecutors mentioned, citing information obtained in the midst of their investigation. Some $50 million got here from buyers within the US, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.
“She timed her scheme perfectly, capitalizing on the frenzied speculation of the early days of cryptocurrency,” mentioned Williams, the highest federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
OneCoins weren’t mined like different cryptocurrencies, federal investigators mentioned. Instead of armies of highly effective servers, OneCoin was generated by a bit of software program, courtroom paperwork mentioned.
Federal prosecutors mentioned that in an e mail to Greenwood in August 2014, Ignatova wrote, “We are not mining actually but telling people sh-t.”
OneCoin’s worth was not based mostly on market provide and demand like different cryptocurrency, prosecutors mentioned, however merely manipulated privately by OneCoin itself.
But then issues got here crashing down
The facade began cracking in 2016 when buyers had a tough time promoting their OneCoins to recoup their authentic investments, courtroom paperwork say.
Word started to unfold on-line that the business was a rip-off. Media shops began asking questions. International and US federal investigators received concerned.
It’s not clear what occurred to Ignatova’s marriage. But the FBI mentioned she discovered OneCoin was being investigated after she bugged an condominium belonging to her American boyfriend and discovered he was cooperating with a federal probe into her firm’s practices.
In October 2017, the US Department of Justice charged Ignatova with one rely every of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit cash laundering, every of which carries a most sentence of 20 years in jail. She additionally was charged with one rely of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a most five-year sentence. A federal decide in New York issued a warrant for her arrest.
Less than two weeks later, on October 25, 2017, she boarded a industrial flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, courtroom paperwork mentioned.
Then she disappeared, leaving her business companions to take the autumn for the failing firm.
The FBI mentioned it believes she might have travelled on a German passport from Athens, presumably to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Russia, Eastern Europe and even again to Bulgaria. It’s providing a $100,000 reward for info resulting in her arrest.
“She left with a tremendous amount of cash,” Michael Driscoll, the FBI’s assistant director-in-charge in New York, advised reporters. “Money can buy a lot of friends, and I would imagine she’s taking advantage of that.”
Her companions weren’t so fortunate. Greenwood was arrested in July 2018 at his residence in Koh Samui, Thailand, and extradited to the US. He pleaded responsible in December to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder cash. He is in jail and faces 20 years in jail for every of the three counts when he is sentenced in April.
Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov, was arrested in March 2019 at Los Angeles International Airport. He’d travelled to the US on business and was getting ready to board his return flight to Bulgaria when 5 massive males in fits handcuffed him and took him to an interrogation room, the place they peppered him with questions on his lacking sister, Bartlett wrote.
Ignatov pleaded responsible to wire fraud conspiracy, cash laundering and fraud fees, and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.
OneCoin has shut down and its web site is not energetic.
But its founder, the lady within the lengthy robes and flashy jewelry, has eluded authorities. More than 5 years after the Cryptoqueen received off a airplane in Greece, her whereabouts stay a thriller.
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