Explained: Who is ‘cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova, now among FBI’s ten most wanted?

Investigators have accused the 42-year-old girl, who was born in Bulgaria, of defrauding victims of greater than $4 billion (€3.83 billion) by means of the OneCoin cryptocurrency firm that she based in 2014

The FBI is providing a $100,000 reward for any data resulting in the arrest of Ignatova, who has been lacking since 2017, when US officers first issued a warrant for her arrest.

She is simply the eleventh girl to be included within the FBI’s Ten Most Needed Fugitive Record in its 72 yr historical past, as reported by Forbes.

‘Previous rip-off with a digital twist’

Earlier than main one of the crucial infamous cryptocurrency scams, Ruja Ignatova had an illustrious resume, with a legislation diploma from Oxford and a stint with McKinsey.

In 2014, she established OneCoin Ltd, and the ‘cryptoqueen’ started to market her forex as a “bitcoin killer.” In accordance with investigators, Ignatova made false representations to obtain big quantities of funds from traders, a lot of whom didn’t totally perceive the best way to spend money on cryptocurrency. The corporate operated around the globe, and had greater than 3 million traders from over 100 international locations. Data that had been obtained in the course of the investigation reveal that between the fourth quarter of 2014 and third quarter of 2016 alone, OneCoin generated a whopping €3.353 billion in gross sales income and earned “earnings” of €2.232 billion.

“She timed her scheme completely, capitalizing on the frenzied hypothesis of the early days of cryptocurrency,” mentioned Damian Williams, the highest federal prosecutor from Manhattan.

Ignatova promised traders large returns at minimal danger and, in line with prosecutors, supplied patrons a fee, in the event that they bought OneCoin to extra folks, in order to lure much more folks into shopping for her fraudulent forex.

IRS Particular Agent in Cost, John R. Tafur referred to as it “an previous rip-off with a digital twist” — which was made for the only objective of defrauding traders.

The “exit technique” for OneCoin was to “take the cash and run and blame another person,” Ignatova mentioned to her co-founder in an electronic mail unearthed in the course of the investigation.

Investigators allege that it was primarily a Ponzi scheme from the very begin, which was falsely portrayed as a cryptocurrency. Ponzi schemes are a type of fraud the place one occasion guarantees excessive returns on funding with little to no danger. Early traders are repaid by buying new ones. As soon as there will not be sufficient folks to safe new rounds of funding, the scheme collapses and traders lose their cash.

How the rip-off labored

The misrepresentations Ignatova and different OneCoin representatives are mentioned to have conned victims of the fraud by means of a sequence of false and deceptive statements.

They’d promised that OneCoin cryptocurrency was ‘mined’ by means of mining servers and its worth was based mostly on market provide and demand, with the worth supposedly rising from €0.50 to round €29.95 per coin, as of January 2019. In actuality, OneCoin was not mined in any respect, and its worth was fully decided internally by Ignatova and her co-conspirators.

OneCoin additionally claimed to have a blockchain (a digital ledger that identifies the forex and data its historic transactions) that’s utilized by different crypto currencies. Because it was not secured by any such expertise, the OneCoin tokens had been principally nugatory, as they may not be actively traded, couldn’t be used to purchase something and traders had no means of tracing their cash.

“OneCoin claimed to have a personal blockchain,” mentioned FBI Particular Agent Ronald Shimko in a press release reported by AFP.

“That is in distinction to different digital currencies, which have a decentralized and public blockchain. On this case, traders had been simply requested to belief OneCoin,” he mentioned.

Ignatov additionally repeatedly instructed OneCoin members that an “preliminary public providing” of the corporate would happen on varied dates between 2018 and 2019, to create pleasure and obtain much more funding from the victims. Nevertheless, the FBI stories that this providing was persistently postponed and it by no means befell.

The escape

The ‘cryptoqueen’ disappeared into skinny air in 2017, when investigating our bodies from internationally started to seek for her.

Ignatova had bugged her boyfriend’s house after rising suspicious of him. When she came upon that he was cooperating with an FBI probe into OneCoin, she instantly boarded a flight from Bulgaria to Greece and has not been seen since.

She speaks English, German and Bulgarian and is likely to be utilizing a pretend passport. She has brown eyes and darkish hair, nevertheless investigators declare that she might need modified her look, in line with the New York Put up.

Ignatova has since been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit cash laundering, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, by the US authorities.

In accordance with The Washington Put up, the primary 4 counts every carry a sentence of as much as 20 years in jail, whereas the final is punishable by as much as 5 years in jail.

After 2017, her brother Konstantin Ignatov took over the corporate. Nevertheless, he was arrested in Los Angeles by the FBI in 2019 for wire fraud. After pleading responsible to a sequence of felonies, he entered right into a plea deal to cooperate with US authorities, in line with The Washington Put up.

Together with him, US company lawyer Mark Scott was additionally convicted in 2019 for laundering $400 million for OneCoin.