She is beautiful, mysterious and one of the greatest fraudsters in world history. As of this month, Ruja Ignatova is in the FBI’s top ten of the world’s most wanted criminals, as the eleventh woman in history. Hollywood is fascinated by her life story. A film is already in the works with Kate Winslet in the lead role and a television series about the 42-year-old Bulgarian who crowned herself the crypto queen.
Nobody knows where Ignatova is. The FBI suspects she is living in South America under an assumed name, surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards. She may have changed her appearance through some cosmetic procedures. A $100,000 reward has been offered for information on her whereabouts. But the golden tip still hasn’t come.
Ignatova disappeared in 2017 after it was revealed that her cryptocurrency onecoin was nothing more than a cover for a pyramid scheme. Nothing at all was recorded in a blockchain, as happens with ‘bonafide cryptocurrencies’ such as bitcoin and ethereum. At onecoin, papers were forged and customers were deceived. It was all fake. With the money people paid for the rising onecoin in value, Ignatova again paid people who sold the coin.
The better alternative to bitcoin
As long as there were more buyers in the market than sellers, things went well. And during the crypto hype of the mid-1910s, that was no problem. The exchange rate rose from less than half a dollar to almost thirty dollars. In 2016, Ignatova traveled the world promoting onecoin as the better alternative to bitcoin. Unlike other crypto coin initiators, she did not stay in the background. On the contrary, she continuously sought the limelight.
She stood in a bright red dress on a stage at the Wembley Arena in London. There she was announced as Dr. Ruja, which would make OneCoin the most important cryptocurrency in the world. From the speakers came Alicia Keys’ song Girl on Fire† She knew she had to make an overwhelming impression as a successful businesswoman and make headlines in the media. She called herself ‘the bitcoin killer’ in London. ‘We don’t have to wait long. If everyone invests their money in my virtual currency, nobody will talk about bitcoin in two years.’
She was so convincing in her marketing campaign that a total of as much as $4 billion was invested in onecoin, money that now seems to have all disappeared. The last thing known about the Bulgarian is that she flew from Sofia to Athens with suitcases full of money, after an American friend who was collaborating with law enforcement had her wiretapped.
on the cover of Forbes† which turned out to be fake
Ignatova was born in Bulgaria. When she was ten, the family moved to the German town of Schramberg in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Her father made a career there as a financier. In high school, Ruja turned out to be a brilliant student. She was able to study law at the University of Constance and later even Oxford. She got a job at management consultancy McKinsey.
In 2012, the Bulgarian first came into disrepute when she became involved through her father in a company that went bankrupt under dubious circumstances. She was given a 14-month suspended prison sentence. But that didn’t stop her from making new investments, which were so successful that she was twice named Business Woman of the Year in Bulgaria. She screened her customers with a portrait on the cover of Rijkluisblad Forbeswhich later turned out to be forged.
Ignatova invented onecoin in 2014, together with her Swedish business partner Sebastian Greenwood. That was perfect timing, according to Damian Williams, the New York prosecutor leading the investigation. “It allowed her to take advantage of the rampant speculation in the early days of cryptocurrencies.” According to William, its cryptocurrency is one of the largest pyramid schemes, also known as Ponzi schemes, in history. According to Michael Driscoll of the FBI, she left Bulgaria with a huge amount of cash. “Money can buy you a lot of friends and I think she did.”
Tom Jones: happy birthday crypto queen
According to journalist Jamie Bartlett, who wrote the podcast series Missing Cryptoqueen made on the basis of leaked documents, the amount that has disappeared far exceeds $4 billion. Ignatova is said to have raked in even more money than American Bernie Madoff, who embezzled more than $ 19.4 billion in the largest fraud case ever.
In 2016, Ignatova hired her brother Konstantin, who was six years younger. He began to smell danger, because of her extravagant lifestyle. For her birthday she flew singer Tom Jones over for a lot of money, who handed her a cake with the congratulations on it Happy Birthday Cryptoqueen† Other employees also had doubts. The onecoin market was on a pair of shielded laptops in Sofia. Accountants reports could not be found.
In October 2017, it got too hot under Dr. Ruja and she disappeared with the northern sun. But the activities continued for another two years before the office in Sofia was evicted. Greenwood and Raja’s brother Konstantin are now detained in the US. Other employees have also been arrested. But the prime suspect has not been found. Lawyers have held the government of Bulgaria liable for failing to intervene, even after she disappeared.
3 x Ruja Ignatova
Before starting onecoin, Ruja Ignatova invested a lot of money in a chain of fashion stores started by the Icelandic glamor model Asdis Ran Gunnarsdottir.
dr. Ruja is said to be the largest owner of bitcoins in the world, according to investigations, the currency she wanted to destroy. She is said to have put the money she brought in with onecoin through an account in the United Arab Emirates into 230 thousand bitcoins. In October last year, it was worth more than 15 billion dollars, now it is 5 billion.
Ignatova was married to the German Bjorn Strehl. From that marriage a daughter was born, whom she wanted to study at a British private school. She had already bought a penthouse in London in advance for 13.5 million pounds. Meanwhile, the German police have also carried out house searches at Strehl because of possible involvement in fraud.