CNN —
Ruja Ignatova strode onto the stage in a flowing burgundy ball costume decorated with black glints. Beams of mild flashed, fireballs erupted and Alicia Keys' "girl on fireplace" blared throughout the audio system.
"looks like a girl, but she's a flame. So vibrant, she can burn your eyes – more advantageous look the opposite direction," the tune crooned as a beaming Ignatova thanked the cheering crowd at London's Wembley enviornment.
That turned into in June 2016, when cryptocurrency turned into an emerging buzzword and traders have been scrambling to cash in. Ignatova known as herself the "Cryptoqueen" and touted her company, OneCoin, as a lucrative rival to Bitcoin within the becoming cryptocurrency market.
"In two years, nobody will talk about Bitcoin anymore," she talked about, as investors applauded and whistled.
Sixteen months later, Ignatova boarded a aircraft in Sofia, Bulgaria, and vanished. She hasn't been seen considering.
Authorities say OneCoin became a pyramid scheme that defrauded americans out of greater than $4 billion as Ignatova convinced buyers in the US and around the globe to throw fistfuls of cash at her business. Federal prosecutors describe OneCoin as probably the most biggest foreign fraud schemes ever perpetrated.
She is now probably the most FBI's 10 most-desired fugitives, alongside accused gang leaders and murderers, and is the best woman at the moment on that checklist. Of the 529 fugitives on the FBI's listing considering that it launched in 1950, she's one among just 11 ladies.
Ignatova and her partners "conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of greenbacks, claiming that OneCoin will be the 'Bitcoin killer,'" US lawyer Damian Williams, long island's top prosecutor, pointed out in a statement remaining month.
"truly, OneCoins were utterly nugatory … (Their) lies had been designed with one aim, to get regular americans in every single place the area to part with their complicated-earned money."
due to the fact that Ignatova disappeared in October 2017, her face has been plastered on the FBI site and throughout principal news shops global. She's additionally one of the vital desired fugitives in Europe.
on the bottom of her FBI wanted poster is a observe: "Ignatova is believed to trip with armed guards and/or associates. Ignatova may additionally have had plastic surgery or in any other case altered her appearance."
The FBI says it picks fugitives for the checklist in line with the size of their crook data and how dangerous they can be. It additionally favors fugitives who aren't well common to maximize the advantage of the software's nationwide publicity.
The bureau declined to deliver further details to CNN past courtroom documents from the united states department of Justice, which did not record an attorney for Ignatova. "This case is an ongoing investigation. we're unable to comment beyond what has already been released publicly," talked about Daniel Crifo, a spokesperson for the FBI workplace in big apple.
but court files element a spectacular narrative: how Ignatova and her OneCoin co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, have been allegedly mindful from the delivery that their bold task become a Ponzi scheme.
"The cryptocurrency OneCoin was based for the only goal of defrauding traders," IRS particular Agent John R. Tafur mentioned in a statement.
whereas Greenwood and Ignatova were engaged on the idea for OneCoin, they talked about it in emails as a "trashy coin," federal officials referred to in court docket files. The files display Greenwood described their buyers as "idiots" and "loopy" in an e mail to Ignatova's brother, Konstantin Ignatov, who also took part in the rip-off and assumed OneCoin management after his sister vanished, in accordance with prosecutors.
"It may not be (something) truly clean or that I at all times work on and even may also be pleased with (except with you in inner most when we make the funds)," Ignatova wrote to Greenwood in 2014.
She additionally proposed an exit strategy should the enterprise fail, saying in a 2014 electronic mail to Greenwood that they may still "take the money and run and blame somebody else for this."
Ruja Ignatova, forty two, is a German citizen however was born in Bulgaria, the place her father changed into an engineer and her mother become a teacher.
In his book, "The lacking Crypto Queen," writer Jamie Bartlett particular her upward thrust from modest beginnings to entrepreneurial stardom.
When she turned into a girl, her household moved to Germany, where Ignatova excelled as a scholar and spent her free time studying and enjoying chess, Bartlett wrote. Classmates described her as smart, pushed and aloof.
Ignatova gained a scholarship to a university in Konstanz, Germany, the place she met and married a fellow legislation student. She maintained she didn't desire toddlers, Bartlett wrote, because they'd get within the way of her acquiring wealth.
She additionally told americans she wanted to be a millionaire by age 30.
"She desperately desired to be prosperous, even devouring books in the early hours about how to make cash," Bartlett wrote.
After researching European legislations at Oxford college, Ignatova landed a job in Sofia as a expert for McKinsey & business, the foreign management consulting enterprise.
purchasers depended on her and involving her rise from humble beginnings and fierce want to be rich, Bartlett wrote. Her fluency in languages, together with Russian, German, English and Bulgarian, additionally helped.
Appearances mattered to Ignatova, who often attended pursuits in night gowns and brilliant crimson lipstick, with diamonds dangling from her ears.
"every little thing exhibited success and glamor," Bartlett wrote. "She turned into captivated with trend and photo."
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are digital belongings created and managed by way of a global, decentralized network of computers as an alternative of a financial institution or executive. Bitcoin, for instance, is "mined," or created, by way of skilled crypto miners using armies of servers in statistics centers.
it's a mostly unregulated and particularly risky business, and professional opinions on the viability of crypto run the gamut. Advocates greatly envision a future by which economies run on digital currencies validated by using the community of clients rather with the aid of a significant financial institution. Critics brush aside it as a Ponzi scheme or, at minimum, a enormously dangerous investment.
In 2014, Ignatova and Greenwood, her co-founder, all started pitching OneCoin to buyers in Europe, big apple and around the world. They hosted on-line webinars and conferences where they advised advantage investors to deposit cash in an account that could enable the buy of OneCoin packages, in keeping with a federal indictment.
OneCoin operated as a multilevel advertising community in which traders received commissions for recruiting others to purchase cryptocurrency packages, federal prosecutors stated. The packages catered to a number of revenue stages, from "starter" to "rich person trader."
Ignatova and her partners promised patrons a fivefold or even tenfold return on their investment, based on court docket files.
A purchasing frenzy ensued. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016 on my own, traders gave OneCoin greater than $four billion, federal prosecutors talked about, citing facts obtained all through their investigation. Some $50 million got here from buyers in the US, in keeping with court docket documents.
"She timed her scheme perfectly, capitalizing on the frenzied speculation of the early days of cryptocurrency," spoke of Williams, the desirable federal prosecutor in new york.
OneCoins have been now not mined like different cryptocurrencies, federal investigators talked about. as a substitute of armies of powerful servers, OneCoin become generated by a chunk of software, court files talked about.
Federal prosecutors referred to that in an electronic mail to Greenwood in August 2014, Ignatova wrote, "We are not mining basically but telling americans sh*t."
OneCoin's value turned into now not based on market give and demand like other cryptocurrency, prosecutors mentioned, however with ease manipulated privately through OneCoin itself.
The facade started cracking in 2016 when traders had a tough time promoting their OneCoins to recoup their usual investments, court files say.
notice began to unfold on-line that the enterprise turned into a rip-off. Media retailers begun asking questions. international and US federal investigators bought worried.
It's now not clear what took place to Ignatova's marriage. but the FBI spoke of she learned OneCoin changed into being investigated after she bugged an condo belonging to her American boyfriend and found out he became cooperating with a federal probe into her business's practices.
In October 2017, the USA department of Justice charged Ignatova with one count each and every of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, each and every of which consists of a maximum sentence of two decades in penitentiary. She additionally became charged with one count number of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum 5-year sentence. A federal decide in big apple issued a warrant for her arrest.
lower than two weeks later, on October 25, 2017, she boarded a commercial flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, court documents stated.
Then she disappeared, leaving her business companions to take the autumn for the failing company.
The FBI referred to it believes she may have traveled on a German passport from Athens, might be to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Russia, jap Europe and even again to Bulgaria. It's offering a $a hundred,000 reward for suggestions leading to her arrest.
"She left with an enormous amount of cash," Michael Driscoll, the FBI's assistant director-in-can charge in long island, informed journalists. "funds can buy lots of friends, and that i would imagine she's taking abilities of that."
Her companions weren't so lucky. Greenwood become arrested in July 2018 at his domestic in Koh Samui, Thailand, and extradited to the U.S.. He pleaded guilty in December to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money. he is in prison and faces twenty years in prison for each of the three counts when he's sentenced in April.
Ignatova's brother, Konstantin Ignatov, become arrested in March 2019 at la overseas Airport. He'd traveled to the U.S. on business and was making ready to board his return flight to Bulgaria when 5 significant men in suits handcuffed him and took him to an interrogation room, where they peppered him with questions about his missing sister, Bartlett wrote.
Ignatov pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, funds laundering and fraud prices, and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.
OneCoin has shut down and its website isn't any longer energetic.
but its founder, the girl in the long gowns and flashy rings, has eluded authorities. more than 5 years after the Cryptoqueen obtained off a aircraft in Greece, her whereabouts stay a secret.
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