The Greatest Crypto Heist You Never Heard of
Level 1 - NGMI
"Take the money and run and blame someone else for this..." - Ruja Ignatova
About Onecoiners: "These ppl are idiots." - Sebastian Greenwood
"... the network would not work with intelligent people" - Konstantin Ignatov
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We are all intimately familiar with Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse which robbed crypto investors of billions of dollars.
The internet and media at large has maintained a keen eye on Sam’s situation (he was sent back to jail due to alleged witness tampering, in case you hadn’t heard).
Luna founder Do Kwon is currently doing 4 months in a Montenegro prison.
Su Zhu and Kyle Davies of 3AC are dodging court orders and working on their newest project.
The SEC is going after Hex founder Richard Heart for fraud.
The Bitfinex hacker and his wife have pleaded guilty to the theft and laundering of over 120,000 Bitcoin.
It appears that, generally speaking, many of crypto’s largest (alleged) offenders have been located and are actively being pursued.
However, there is one multi-billion fraudster who has continued to evade authorities.
She appears as the only woman on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list. Some believe she is the most wanted woman in the world.
Ruja Ignatova was the mastermind behind the OneCoin scam and is charged with defrauding over $4 billion from investors worldwide. She has eluded authorities for nearly five years since her disappearance in October 2017. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to her arrest.
The case has been ongoing for years, with many of her co-conspirators having been caught or even found dead.
Who is Ruja Ignatova?
Ignatova was born in 1980 in Ruse, Bulgaria. Apparently, she graduated from Oxford and even worked at McKinsey. She is reportedly fluent in Russian, German, English and Bulgarian.
Ambition, when applied to the wrong endeavors, can be catastrophic.
In 2012, she received a 14 month suspended sentence for her involvement in a scam with her father Plamen Ignatov. This did not deter her from starting an MLM scheme called “BigCoin” in 2013 followed by the OneCoin pyramid scheme in 2014.
OneCoin was marketed as a “Bitcoin killer.” However, OneCoin was not decentralized, not a blockchain, and did not use computing power for mining. Users were not able to see their transactions, and the price was simply set by Ruja. One hell of a dupe!
The scale of OneCoin's deception was massive, with the scheme generating over €4 billion in sales revenue between 2014 and 2016. Ignatova used her earnings to buy mansions around the world. However, as they became unable to recoup their investments, investors began to spread word of the scam. OneCoin caught the attention of the authorities. Mounting police investigations led Ignatova to vanish in October 2017. She was last seen on a flight to Athens.
The mystery surrounding Ignatova deepened with reports suggesting that she might have been murdered in 2018 by a Bulgarian drug lord named Hristoforos Amanatidis, also known as "Taki". However, the FBI continues its investigation under the assumption that she is still alive.
By 2019, U.S. authorities charged her in absentia for wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. Her disappearance led to her being added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list in June 2022. An international Interpol warrant by German authorities further underscores the global pursuit of the "Cryptoqueen."
Something peculiar occurred earlier this year that brought the Cryptoqueen back into the limelight for a brief moment. A penthouse in London, England went up for sale with an asking price of $15.5 million. This apartment was purchased under a company name whose beneficiary is none other than Ruja Ignatova. New regulations required her lawyers to name her in full instead of just her shell company.
It’s more likely than not that Ruja Ignatova is alive, moving her money through webs of shell companies in jurisdictions that have little government oversight. Plastic surgery has likely altered the way she looks. The rumors of her death in 2018 were likely an attempt to fake her death and throw authorities off her trail.
Co-conspirators
Many of Ignatova's alleged collaborators, including her co-founder Sebastian Greenwood have already been arrested. Greenwood was detained in Thailand in 2018 and then extradited to the United States. Last December, he pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering. This was announced by Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Greenwood, known as OneCoin’s "global master distributor", was the driving force behind the MLM network that marketed the fraudulent cryptocurrency. He was so deeply entrenched in the scheme that he earned approximately €20 million a month as the top MLM distributor of OneCoin.
Email exchanges between Greenwood and Ignatova revealed their true intentions. They often referred to their cryptocurrency as a "trashy coin" and discussed strategies to deceive their investors further. One such strategy was to manipulate the value of OneCoin, giving the illusion of a steadily increasing price. In reality, OneCoin's value was artificially set by its founders.
Ignatova's younger brother Konstantin Ignatov was arrested in March 2019 in Los Angeles in connection to the scam. He pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges as part of a plea deal. He has yet to be sentenced, with his sentencing date continuously being postponed citing his assistance in the investigation.
Mark Scott, a former corporate lawyer, was convicted in November 2019 of laundering $400 million for the group by using a network of shell companies, offshore bank accounts and investment funds. He allegedly received $50 million for his assistance in laundering her funds.
Ignatova’s adviser, Frank Schneider, was in France awaiting extradition to the U.S. when he also fled. This happened recently in May 2023, following the murder of a Bulgarian mafia kingpin Krasmir Kamenov. Kamenov apparently had ties to Ignatova, and news reports say he may have been on the verge of providing information about her.
Ignatova’s Bitcoin
If you thought that wasn’t crazy enough, get a load of this.
In a claim by Jonathan Levy, a lawyer representing OneCoin victims, he states that in 2015 Ignatova struck a deal with Emirati Royal Sheikh Saoud bin Faisal Al Qassimi whereby she received 230,000 BTC for 210m Emirati dirhams (~$55 million at the time). This would make Ignatova one of the world’s largest bitcoin holders and in control of multiple billions of dollars. At the peak in November 2021, her Bitcoin stash (if she still has it) would have been worth $15 billion.
Sound unbelievable?
Here is an October 2015 picture of Ignatova and Sheik Faisal, the father of Sheikh Saoud who allegedly did the transaction (source: BBC).
And here’s an excerpt of the contract.
What Next?
Earlier this year, Jonathan Levy made an urgent request to reopen the OneCoin case, alleging he had spoken to a key figure involved in the OneCoin scandal who confirmed $2 billion in funds still existed.
Any time billions of dollars disappear and stay that way, it’s safe to assume that following the money will lead to high up places. Ignatova has operated with a high degree of sophistication, evading even the FBI for the better part of 5 years.
Bank executives, kingpins, elite lawyers, and political elites alike seem to have some ties to this case.
Despite being on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list, Ignatova was removed from Europol’s most wanted list.
With Ignatova in the wind, it’s unlikely that victims will see their funds anytime soon.
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Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are opinions from an anonymous group of cartoon animals with Wall Street and Software backgrounds.
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Fun read, thanks!
I thought she was killed on a yacht some years ago, but apparently that's not confirmed...