The U.S. Federal Police has listed OneCoin founder Ruzhu Ignatova as one of the 10 most wanted criminals. She is known by the nickname “crypto-queen.” Police have offered a $100,000 reward for information that will help find the criminal.
Bulgarian crypto-scammer
The FBI accuses Ruja Ignatova of defrauding millions of investors of more than $4 billion. In 2014, the woman and her partner founded the OneCoin project in Bulgaria. They sold virtual currency that didn’t actually exist on the blockchain. In their ads, they presented the token as a “bitcoin killer,” promising investors exorbitant profits.
Interestingly, Ignatova and her partner promoted OneCoin through network marketing. That is, investors received bonuses if they connected their friends and relatives to the pyramid.
Again, OneCoins were not mined in the usual way. Of course, the tokens were not listed on an exchange, and in fact did not exist.
OneCoin presented itself as a private blockchain. Real cryptocurrencies have a decentralized and publicly accessible blockchain on which all transactions can be viewed. In the case of OneCoin, investors simply trusted the words of the “crypto queen.”
In 2017, a U.S. court issued an arrest warrant for Ignatova. She was in Sofia at the time, but managed to flee to Athens after the court decision. There has been no information about her since then. Ignatova’s accomplice is under investigation.