Key Takeaways
- The FBI is including OneCoin cofounder Ruja “CryptoQueen” Ignatova to its Ten Most Wished Record.
- Prosecutors imagine OneCoin defrauded traders of greater than $4 billion.
- Ignatova disappeared in 2017; her whereabouts are nonetheless unknown.
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Ruja Ignatova has been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wished Record for allegedly scamming traders out of $4 billion by way of OneCoin.
Wished for $4 Billion Rip-off
The hunt for CryptoQueen is intensifying.
At the moment the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) added Ruja Ignatova, higher identified within the crypto area as “CryptoQueen”, to its Ten Most Wished Record for “allegedly [defrauding] traders of billions.” Expenses in opposition to Ignatova embody conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit cash laundering, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and securities fraud.
The FBI is providing as much as $100,000 in reward for data resulting in Ignatova’s arrest. It warns that she could also be touring with armed bodyguards and associates.
Ignatova is the cofounder of OneCoin, a Bulgarian cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that’s believed by prosecutors to have defrauded its victims of over $4 billion. OneCoin would promote academic buying and selling packages to traders for as much as six-figure sums; these packages included tokens that could possibly be used to mine OneCoins. OneCoins might solely be exchanged for different currencies on the OneCoin alternate, which shut down with out discover in January 2017.
Ignatova was the chief of the group from 2014 to October 2017, at which level her brother Konstantin Ignatov took her place. Ignatov and one other OneCoin cofounder, Sebastian Greenwood, have been arrested in 2019 and 2018 respectively; Ignatov, who pleaded responsible to prices just like these in opposition to Ignatova, faces as much as 90 years in jail.
Ignatova, a Bulgarian citizen, disappeared in October 2017 in Athens, Greece. The FBI believes she could possibly be touring on a German passport. She was the topic of a BBC podcast collection entitled The Lacking Cryptoqueen. She was lately added to Europol’s Most Wished Record as properly.
Cash laundering and wire fraud have been persistent points throughout the crypto area. Main crypto alternate Binance was lately accused of letting European crime syndicates, Russian drug sellers, and North Korean hackers course of their funds by way of the platform.
Disclosure: On the time of writing, the writer of this piece owned ETH and several other different cryptocurrencies.
