The viewers on the 2016 occasion went wild. Amid a crypto growth, OneCoin’s standing was surging within the United States and throughout the globe. But the corporate’s meteoric rise would finally meet a swift finish.
Just one yr later, Ignatova disappeared with no hint, and authorities in Europe and the United States have tried to catch her ever since. The FBI on Thursday added Ignatova to its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives — a notoriety usually bestowed on suspected cartel leaders, terrorists and killers. Ignatova, in the meantime, is accused of spearheading a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors of over $4 billion, one thought-about to be among the many largest in historical past.
“Today’s announcement is a pledge to redouble our efforts to capture Ignatova, to seek justice for her victims and to hold her accountable for her crimes,” Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, mentioned in a Thursday information convention.
Ruja Ignatova, pictured within the above wished poster, is seen giving a speech on the OneCoin’s Wembley Arena occasion for traders pic.twitter.com/ggx5NazryM
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) June 30, 2022
Before her face was splashed throughout a wished poster, Ignatova, a German citizen with Bulgarian ties, had a “sterling résumé” showcasing a legislation diploma from the University of Oxford and a consulting job at McKinsey & Company, Williams mentioned. How Ignatova, the one lady on the most-wanted fugitives list, got here to be part of a docket of alleged murderers and gang leaders is a story that dates again to 2014, when OneCoin was born.
The flashy thought pitched to traders and promoted throughout advertising and marketing supplies was a revolutionary forex “for everyone to make payments everywhere, [to] everyone, globally,” as Ignatova quipped at Wembley Arena. OneCoin promised a cryptocurrency that may surpass some other and make early customers see their investments yield a “fivefold or tenfold” return, in accordance to a prison criticism.
But the story, as outlined in courtroom paperwork, isn’t one of overhyped guarantees that its founders couldn’t ship upon — just like the case of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Instead, OneCoin was meant to be a Ponzi scheme from the get-go, investigators allege.
Despite supposedly being a kind of crypto, OneCoin didn’t even have a cost system or a blockchain mannequin, the crucial technology that underpins cryptocurrencies — thus rendering OneCoin’s tokens primarily nugatory. Ignatova and the corporate’s founders are accused of understanding as a lot. (In an announcement to the BBC in 2019, OneCoin denied any wrongdoing.)
According to inside emails obtained by investigators, the purpose of creating OneCoin was to create a “trashy coin” that may fuse the frenzy surrounding crypto with multilevel advertising and marketing.
OneCoin relied on its customers to carry in additional members by providing a slew of rewards, commissions and “trading packages” at totally different worth factors, in accordance to federal investigators. In the top, the community of traders spanned over 100 international locations. More than 3 million individuals are believed to have been duped, Williams, the prosecutor, mentioned Thursday.
Ignatova “appealed to people’s humanity, promising that OneCoin would transform the lives of unbanked people,” Williams mentioned. “And she timed her scheme, perfectly capitalizing on the frenzied speculation in the early days of cryptocurrency.”
The plan, nonetheless, was to “take the money and run and blame someone else for this,” Ignatova wrote to a co-founder in 2014, in accordance to courtroom paperwork.
The cracks round OneCoin began to present round 2016, Insider reported, when Sweden, Latvia, Norway, Croatia, Italy and Bulgaria — the place OneCoin was headquartered — started including OneCoin to lists warning about fraudulent operations. Lawsuits quickly started to pour in.
Ignatova started fearing that legislation enforcement would meet up with her and even bugged her American boyfriend’s condo after she grew suspicious of him, Williams mentioned. The recordings finally alerted her that he was cooperating with the FBI and precipitated her plan to flee, he added.
“She immediately boarded a flight from Bulgaria to Greece with a security guard. Not one piece of luggage. The security guard came back, but Ignatova didn’t. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since,” Williams mentioned.
Despite her disappearance in October 2017, Ignatova was indicted by a federal grand jury that month and a warrant for her arrest was issued. She’s been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit cash laundering, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The first 4 counts every carry a sentence of up to 20 years in jail, whereas the final is punishable by up to 5 years in jail.
OneCoin’s destiny finally got here to mirror its founder’s. Left to Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov, the corporate faltered after he was arrested by the FBI in 2019. He pleaded responsible to a slew of felonies and entered a plea deal to cooperate with authorities — which steered he could enter the witness safety program and assume a brand new identification, in accordance to courtroom paperwork.
The FBI is now making a bid for the general public to assist with the investigation and providing a $100,000 reward for data main to Ignatova’s arrest.
At the 2016 occasion in London, she mentioned that “I’ve been called a lot of things and probably the best thing that the press called me was … the ‘bitcoin killer.’ ”
Now, she will be able to add “most wanted fugitive” to the list.
