Standing tall as the only woman on the FBI ‘s Most Wanted Fugitives list, Ignatova is wanted in connection to the largest fraud scheme (or one of them at this point) ever perpetrated.
Ruja Ignatova is one of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives — the only woman currently on that list.
What did she do?
According to federal authorities, she ran a company called OneCoin similar to many of the other so-called crypto exchanges that have gone down for fraud or been accused of such as of late. One Coin ran what is now amounting to a ‘pyramid scheme’ according to officials who claim she helped bilk investors across the globe out of billions of dollars.
Ignatova and her partners “conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars, claiming that OneCoin would be the ‘Bitcoin killer,’” US Attorney Damian Williams, New York’s top prosecutor, said in a statement last month.
“In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless … (Their) lies were designed with one goal, to get everyday people all over the world to part with their hard-earned money.”
When was she last seen?
According to police, she disappeared way back in 2017 and has since fallen entirely off of the grid. She disappeared just as many of the suspected funds came into her possession and it is unclear where she is at this time. She is also one of the most wanted fugitives across Europe making her one of the most wanted women in the world right now.
Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to fraud and related charges in connection to his sister’s company. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in February.From Konstantin Ignatov/Instagram
When did it all begin?
Dating back to 2014, she and her brother Konstantin began pitching the idea of Onecoin to investors across the globe. According to prosecutors, she helped forge the false idea that investors would receive up to tenfold returns on their investments, however, that simply just wasn’t true. Prosecutors allege that the company operated like a multilevel marketing program where people were often urged to buy into the scam through conferences and other similar kinds of gatherings.
U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York/Twitter
OneCoin co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood, pictured in 2016. He has already pleaded guilty and is in custody of the American authorities.
How did they do it?
According to prosecutors and their case, they allege that the group and the company as a whole used a private software to manipulate the price and cost of OneCoin rather than it be based on similar factors like its ‘rival’ Bitcoin. Initially, she had based or claimed to base the company on things like Bitcoin and as a direct rival but it was never actually anything of the sort.
The full flyer detailing the information found in this article is below.
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