But then I recruit Georgia and Phil to start selling too, and I make a cut on their sales as well. ', "I said: 'What? In 2012, she was convicted of fraud in Germany in connection with the acquisition of a steel company obtained by Ruja and her father. "OK Jen they don't want to disclose that kind of information, just in case something goes wrong where the blockchain is being held. Yet a typical recruiting event would include no education, but plenty of discussion about investing in cryptocurrency. At the gated entrance to their mansion is a 10ft-high wrought iron gate with their names and the slogan "What dreams may come". ", Such explanations don't offer much comfort to those affected. What are the things that I'm going to have to do for this company?'" Just as he was boarding his flight home, he was pounced on by FBI agents, arrested, and charged with fraud in connection with OneCoin. FBI records presented in court documents earlier this year indicate that on 25 October 2017, just two weeks after her Lisbon no-show, she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens. 'Haters' - Bitcoiners are 'haters'. According to the BBC in an article dated July 2, 2022, Ignatova stashed millions of dollars in the rival Bitcoin before disappearing in 2017. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Taking seriously Alan McLean's advice about studying Dr Ruja's life before OneCoin, Georgia and I turn to the internet, which fortunately never forgets anything. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from Dr Ruja. Daniel is one of thousands of Ugandans who've bought into Dr Ruja's fake cryptocurrency - and the OneCoin financial documents leaked to the BBC reveal that as time went on, investors like him became increasingly important to OneCoin. She now runs Whatsapp support groups for OneCoin investors who realise they have been swindled. The alleged motive for the murder was to conceal the drug lord's involvement in the OneCoin scam. The FBI added Dr. Ruja Ignatova, the so-called 'Cryptoqueen,' to its list of Ten Most Wanted fugitives. The US lawyer prosecuting Ignatova, Damian Williams, released a damning statement last month where he said her crypto tokens were useless. But when Daniel found out about OneCoin, it suddenly seemed like a much better alternative. That was her last known location. She never appeared. she replied, sharply. According to the documents, the meeting was attended by the FBI, the US Department of Justice and the New York District Attorney. This was to be resolved at a large gathering of European OneCoin promoters in Lisbon, Portugal, in October 2017. MLM is not illegal. It represents the dark side of rapid technological change - the way that every new technology creates amazing new opportunities and possibilities for people who understand it, but also the chance to exploit the people who don't. Author's note: I am not an expert in cryptocurrencies. To explain this, I need first to explain briefly how a cryptocurrency actually works. I ask if he felt guilty, for having sold so many people a coin that didn't exist, and for having made so much money in the process. Ignatova was married to a German lawyer, with whom she had a daughter in 2016. She watched excitedly on the OneCoin website as the value of her coins steadily rose. Today doors are locked. "And in that sense it's cultic.". So with Georgia Catt, producer of The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, I went to see Oliver Bullough, an expert on what he calls Moneyland - the shadowy parallel world where criminals and the super-rich hide their wealth. They would always need someone in charge who could manipulate the supply, and forgery was too easy. "There was no other way," he says ruefully. A couple of people looked at the photographs and paused for a long time, raising our hopes - but then said they didn't recognise her. [11][failed verification] In 2005, she earned a PhD in private international law from the University of Constance in Germany with the dissertation Art. Frankfurt probably isn't the only place she goes - it might be one of several places, including perhaps Dubai and Russia. She exploited the Cryptocurrency boom for a fortune and then disappeared without a trace . On 6 March 2019 Konstantin Ignatov was at Los Angeles International airport, waiting to fly back to Bulgaria after some OneCoin meetings in the US. They thought I ate their money.". Ignatova was a convincing speaker. Bishop Fred, we learned, is now one of the country's top promoters of OneCoin, though he says it's no longer promoted during church services. There have been several alleged sightings of her, and it is believed that she could be travelling in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Dubai. She studied at Oxford University and received a PhD in International Law from the University of Constance. And plus, as an application, it doesn't need a server behind it. Following her studies, she became a consultant for McKinsey and Co. Fairly soon Igor Alberts was making more than 1m a month from OneCoin, which quickly became the biggest product in network marketing. Some are divorced.". The book is called The Missing Cryptoqueen: The Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency Con and the Woman Who Got Away With It. But besides loving books, he was also a master book thief. Prudence is a nurse in a Kampala slum, who thought she could make more money selling OneCoin and set about recruiting new investors. When we started planning the Missing Cryptoqueen podcast in late 2018, no-one really had a clue what happened to Dr Ruja after her disappearance. Reluctantly, she agreed to a conversation on Skype. I would have just turned my back and walked away," he says. The FCA did not respond to the BBC's request to comment. Ruja's brother Constantin Ignatov, whom she placed in charge of the company after leaving in 2017, was arrested in March 2019. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. All of them were "very up-tempo, full of beans, full of passion", she remembers. That I don't know what they're thinking. "You must dig deeper.". A change in the rules of Companies House the UK equivalent of ASIC forced Ignatova out of hiding, as she had to be named in full rather than just her shell company. This platform was launched after many delays. But later we hear that we might have been in the presence of Dr Ruja - that she was there, in the same room, right in front of our noses. Born on May 30, 1980, in Bulgaria, Ignatova moved to Germany with her family when she was 10 years old. In 2016 it was here that 22-year-old Daniel Lienhardt came as he was scraping together the 700,000 Ugandan shillings ($250) he needed to buy a OneCoin starter package. Why have so many people continued to believe in OneCoin, despite all the evidence? [24], The Federal Bureau of Investigation added Ignatova to its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and announced at a joint press conference with IRS Criminal Investigation and United States Attorney's Office Southern District of New York, offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to her arrest. There are videos of the minister, known as Bishop Fred, leading the congregation in call and response. Greatly feared for his use of violence, Silas Jayne operated in the very dark underworld of the champion horse business. (I tested this explanation on my mother, the family technophobe, and she told me I'd failed to make it clear enough and should start again. "This is supposed to mean that you can no longer use a British company to hide behind," he says, as he scrolls down the page. You think, 'Wait a bit longer. There are also investors who feel guilty. Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished, BBC News, November 24, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61966824, https://www.banklesstimes.com/news/2021/11/17/onecoin-alive-and-kicking-in-bulgaria-govt-assisted-crypto-pyramid-scheme/. The smallest package cost 140, but they went all the way up to 118,000. "The companies and individuals behind OneCoin are based outside UK jurisdiction," it said. Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. People in villages trust people from the city, Prudence tells us. Read about our approach to external linking. Others told us she was dead - which does remain a possibility. But towards the end of the year Jen McAdam was contacted by a stranger on the internet. "Go back to her life before OneCoin. And even then, the question remained, where had she gone next? In general, people are tempted by the idea of making huge profits fast. Dr Ruja Ignatova has been charged with wire fraud, security fraud and money laundering, by the US authorities By Jamie Bartlett Presenter, The Missing Cryptoqueen In June 2016, Dr Ruja. Ruja Ignatova, with the help of a partner, created a crypto currency that was a scam. Investors who have worked hard their whole life and saved some money risked these savings, believing that by investing in OneCoin they could have a better future. No other law enforcement bodies in attendance would confirm how the information got out. Between August 2014 and March 2017 more than 4bn was invested in dozens of countries. [12] She reportedly has also worked for McKinsey & Company. She had been impressed by Ruja and the upward trend in the price of OneCoin without the fluctuations other cryptocurrencies usually have. She is thought to have undergone several plastic surgeries in order to alter her appearance. Both companies were founded by Ignatova and Greenwood. From Pakistan to Brazil, from Hong Kong to Norway, from Canada to Yemen even Palestine. It starts to get very very very scary, very very very fast." Bulgarian-born German citizen Ruja Ignatova, FBIs list of the 10 most-wanted fugitives. It's a green light for the OneCoin scammers to continue and extort more money from innocent people in the UK and nothing has been done about it. If it's true she was in these countries earlier this year, she probably has a fake identity. The inescapable conclusion was that those rising numbers on the OneCoin website were meaningless - they were just numbers typed into a computer by a OneCoin employee. Phil and Georgia both recruit two people, and then all four of them recruit two more, and so on. Do you know how they do so? After that, she vanished and remains missing. "They still exist", he says, in his garden near the village of Hay-on-Wye. Game over.". VIA HACHETTE BOOKS. 2023 BBC. 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