HomeWorld NewsFBI: OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova on world's most wanted list

FBI: OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova on world’s most wanted list

OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova has been added by the FBI to the list of the world’s most wanted people for allegedly scamming investors out of as much as $4 billion.

OneCoin’s Ignatova among FBI’s most wanted

Just yesterday, a tweet appeared on the US Attorney’s Twitter profile explaining that a press conference would be held to announce that Ignatova had been added to the list of the 10 most wanted fugitives.

To keep things interesting, the OneCoin founder last month had also been added to the most wanted list of Europol, which has even provided a $5200 reward for anyone who can help in the investigation.

In March 2019, her brother Konstantin Ignatove, an accomplice in the Ponzi scheme, was arrested.

FBI’s 10 most wanted: OneCoin alongside murderers and rapists

Ruja Ignatova was placed on the “Top Most Wanted” fugitive list by the FBI.  

The list also includes murderers, robbers, stalkers, rapists, and all kinds of criminals wanted in America and beyond.

What is OneCoin?

The nicknamed ‘Crypto Queen’ had founded the Ponzi scheme OneCoin in 2015 and the company was originally based in Bulgaria. The purpose of OneCoin was supposed to be the creation of an electronic currency, an alternative to cash and especially an alternative to Bitcoin.

Like any pyramid scheme, OneCoin was based on the principle of getting other people into the business to convince other investors to buy packets of tokens that would be converted to OneCoin in the future when the currency was finally created.

According to data held by the Italian AGCM, token packages ranged from 140 euros to as much as 27,530 euros. In the first case, a revenue of 2,800 euros was promised in 2018. In the case of the largest investment, the “guaranteed” return was as much as 3 million euros.

In reality, the only way to get rich from this project was to sell packages to other people and recruit new investors.

After operating for several years, despite the fact that many had already identified it as a Ponzi scheme, OneCoin was stopped by the German BaFin, but also by the British FCA and the Italian Antitrust Authority because it did not have the licenses to operate.

Since then Ruja Ignatova disappeared and it is obviously not known whether she is still alive, as two bodies of OneCoin promoters were found in Mexico in July 2020.

Amelia Tomasicchio
Amelia Tomasicchiohttps://cryptonomist.ch
As expert in digital marketing, Amelia began working in the fintech sector in 2014 after writing her thesis on Bitcoin technology. Previously author for several international crypto-related magazines and CMO at Eidoo. She is now the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Cryptonomist, and also PR manager for the Italian market at Bitget. She is also a marketing teacher at Digital Coach in Milan and she published a book about NFTs for the Italian publishing house Mondadori, while she is also helping artists and company to entering in the sector. As advisor, Amelia is also involved in metaverse-related project such as The Nemesis and OVER.
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