He claimed to be a good Samaritan, someone who had studied OneCoin carefully and wanted to speak to people who had invested. "I'm somehow hiding myself. Until this week, however, the OneCoin head office remained open for business - and people were continuing to promote the currency. OneCoin was not a cryptocurrency and it did not have blockchain technology. A towel covers the front door, and a few metres away is her land, where she grows her own food and sells anything left over at the local market. She spotted that society's defence against OneCoin - the law-makers, the police, and also us in the media would struggle to understand what was happening. 2023 BBC. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. When you're dealing with a scam worth billions of euros, it's not unusual for shadowy groups to get involved. she shouted. For its fans this is a revolutionary new form of currency, with the potential to sideline the banks and national currencies, and provide banking for anyone with a mobile phone. "You're told not to believe anything from the 'outside world'," she recalls. Barely a year later, she bamboozled billions and left it behind (not the money) - family included. 2023 BBC. You've heard of Google, but there are several other search engines that specialise in this. It depends upon a special type of database called a blockchain, which is like a huge book - one that Bitcoin owners have independent but identical copies of. It's thought to be a key anti-corruption tool. "That's what they call it. [26], According to a report published by Bulgarian investigative reporting site Bird, Ignatova was murdered in November 2018 on the orders of a Bulgarian drug lord, Hristoforos Amanatidis, also known as "Taki". Europol said it was looking into the issue. At the age of 10, her family moved to Germany. Read about our approach to external linking. In 2020, it was announced that Jennifer McAdam will be portrayed by Kate Winslet in an upcoming Hollywood film about the OneCoin fraud. While in Waltenhofen, we learned that she had a German husband, a lawyer for the well-known firm, Linklaters. After Jennifer lost her money, she pursued Ignatova for six years and she was disappointed when the City of London police closed their investigation in 2019, saying they could not locate any assets of OneCoin or its founders in the UK. They started pitching it to potential investors in 2014, promising between a fivefold and tenfold return, and referred to their investors as idiots and crazy. At one, in July 2017, the American pop star Bebe Rexha performed a private set. In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless, he said, per CNN. So it's our blockchain technology, a SQL server with a database.". They don't have a blockchain today. And his targets were public libraries in America where he would masquerade as a "jolly," well-educated professor and ultimately pillage rare books to the tune of more than half a million dollars. Strehl, husband of one the biggest scammers Ruja, was invisible during the whole OneCoin saga. There's a famous saying in journalism, "Follow the money." "It's hard. One of the main OneCoin offices in Kampala is attached to a church. Facebook Previously, the property belonged to a company called Abbots House Penthouse Limited,. "When prophecy fails they believe more strongly," she says. They can easily kill me. It seemed like easy money. You think, 'Wait a bit longer. Black-and-gold shoes, black-and-gold pleated suit, black-and-gold shirt, black-and-gold sunglasses, and he has a thick black-and-gold ring on. 1 EuGVO Chancen und Perspektiven der Reform des Gerichtsstands am Erfllungsort, which discusses lex causae in conflict of laws. But they have always failed because no-one could trust them. But besides loving books, he was also a master book thief. "What's the name of the company?" Every time a Bitcoin is sent from me to someone else, a record of that transaction goes into everyone's book. In early June 2016 a 36-year-old businesswoman called Dr Ruja Ignatova walked on stage at Wembley Arena in front of thousands of adoring fans. According to the documents, the meeting was attended by the FBI, the US Department of Justice and the New York District Attorney. The 42-year-old Bulgarian-born woman is wanted for her alleged role in running a cryptocurrency scam known as OneCoin. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is one of five financial routes Ignatova has known connections to. List of fugitives from justice who disappeared, " 41- , ", "Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then ran", "The mystery of the disappearing 'Cryptoqueen', "The 4bn OneCoin scam: how crypto-queen Dr Ruja Ignatova duped ordinary people out of billions then went missing", "Is OneCoin The Biggest Financial Fraud in History? A senior promoter gave her a nice car to impress customers, and instructed her to visit farmers when their crops were being harvested and they had money in their pocket. Bjorn Bjercke is a blockchain expert and he was the first person who started speaking publicly against OneCoin. And that friend was visiting the richest neighbourhood in Frankfurt in summer this year. "There's the answer, right from the horse's mouth, it's official," said one promoter from Alberta, Canada, in a video posted online. Except now with plastic surgery, and so harder to spot. The company went bankrupt shortly after its acquisition. 5 Nr. Cryptocurrency as an idea was just entering the mainstream. If it doesn't happen, life is hard.". "Look, nothing has happened. But though she has stopped recruiting, many others haven't, and there are still plenty of interested buyers, she says. "In my opinion, for what it's worth, she's moving around the Mediterranean," he says. "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. We explore the path she followed in her business life, making her extremely rich, extremely quicklybut it was all done at the expense of others. She would urge and convince simple people to invest in OneCoin and not be left out of the huge potential profits. The reason so many people are excited by Bitcoin is that it solves that problem. At the gated entrance to their mansion is a 10ft-high wrought iron gate with their names and the slogan "What dreams may come". Then, two years ago, she disappeared. She exploited the Cryptocurrency boom for a fortune and then disappeared without a trace . I will double your coins, I will double your coins. She was entered into a Whatsapp group, with its own "leader" who disseminated information from the headquarters in Sofia. She was dressed, as usual, in an expensive. [21][22] An Interpol Red Notice followed. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Alberts was brought up in a poor neighbourhood. "We believe consumers should be wary of dealing with OneCoin," it said. pic.twitter.com/Qv2nNE8Mwf. In October 2017, Ruja was scheduled to appear in a OneCoin promotional event in Lisbon, Portugal. And even then, the question remained, where had she gone next? Ms Ignatova disappeared on 25 October 2017 after being tipped off about intensifying police investigations into her OneCoin cryptocurrency. There are also investors who feel guilty. Bang!". Ruja Plamenova Ignatova ( Bulgarian: , romanized : Rua Plamenova Ignatova; born 30 May 1980) is a Bulgarian -born German citizen and convicted fraudster. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and is still the biggest and best-known - its rise in value from a few cents to hundreds of dollars per coin by mid-2016 had given rise to a frenzy of excitement among investors. 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. In the Ntangamo region of Uganda, not far from Rwandan border, most people make their living growing bananas, or sometimes cassava, sweet potato, beans or groundnut. This is notoriously difficult - go online and you'll find hundreds of different descriptions, some of them utterly baffling to the non-specialist. Over the next several weeks, Curry sent a stream of information about how cryptocurrencies work: links, articles, YouTube videos. "What was her lifestyle? OneCoin, Dr Ruja told the Wembley audience, was the "Bitcoin Killer". So it seems Ruja is still alive, and is able to visit a European capital without fearing arrest. "No other company even came close," Alberts says. Dr Ruja had vanished. It took McAdam three months to go through it all, but questions were starting to form. ", "Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Charges Against Leaders Of "OneCoin," A Multibillion-Dollar Pyramid Scheme Involving The Sale Of A Fraudulent Cryptocurrency", "BKA - Fahndung nach Personen - Ruja IGNATOVA", https://moneyweek.com/economy/people/605142/ruja-ignatova-profile-crooked-cryptoqueen, "The Outrageous Case of OneCoin, the Billion Dollar Scam Sold as a "Bitcoin Killer", "Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished", "OneCoin Took In Billions. Do you know what agencies go after them? Ruja's brother Constantin Ignatov, whom she placed in charge of the company after leaving in 2017, was arrested in March 2019. Bulgarian-born German citizen Ruja Ignatova, 42, and a business partner called Sebastian Greenwood conned crypto enthusiasts by claiming their crypto token, OneCoin, would be a Bitcoin killer. We already knew that Dr Ruja spent some of her childhood in Schramberg, southern Germany. The fact that OneCoin was operating internationally also created difficulties for the authorities. "They're very easy to set up and they look legitimate.". They thought I ate their money.". When Georgia and I called them ourselves to check, they confirmed it. Some are running because they got loans from a bank. They'd read, with envy, the stories of people striking gold with Bitcoin and thought OneCoin was a second chance. 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. Ruja Ignatova profile summary Full name: Ruja Ignatova Date of birth: 30th May 1980 Place of birth: Sofia, Bulgaria Hometown: Schramberg, Baden-Wrttemberg state, Germany Zodiac Sign: Taurus Age: 41 years Company: OneCoin Nationality: Bulgarian Ethnicity: Caucasian Parents: Veska and Plamen Ignatov Sibling: Konstantin Ignatov In August this year, the City of London police ended a two-year investigation into OneCoin. The BBC was not able to verify all of the documents leaked. She lives in a concrete house with a tin roof - five small rooms, a small television and a cooking area. (Her) lies were designed with one goal, to get everyday people all over the world to part with their hard-earned money.. The documents show attendees from Bulgaria's Interior Ministry at the March 2017 Europol meeting. Daniel translates, and his mother's reply comes back. From that amount, he had collected $50 million in fees. The FBI launched their most wanted list in 1950 and of the 529 fugitives that have earned an honorable mention, shes one of just 11 women. He is now facing extradition to the US for his alleged role in the OneCoin fraud. This scam is estimated to be well over four billion dollars. But there was something wrong. Ruja Ignatova was born in Sofia but moved to Germany when she was 8 years old. McAdam started a Facebook support group for other defrauded victims of OneCoin. Lots of people were looking to get involved in this strange new opportunity. The worlds most wanted woman is now officially listed as the ultimate beneficial owner of a London penthouse,he told iNews. In court, US prosecutors alleged in 2019 that Mr Schneider was the one who provided her with confidential police information, although it is not clear if the allegations relate specifically to the leaked files seen by the podcast. She watched excitedly on the OneCoin website as the value of her coins steadily rose. 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