Saturday 2 July 2022 10:27 PM Why I believe Cryptoqueen fraudster who vanished with £3.3billion is hiding on ... trends now
It is a mystery more perplexing than any airport thriller: how the woman behind one of the biggest and most blatant frauds in history could step off a plane in Greece and simply vanish. To those on the trail of Ruja Ignatova, the glamorous Bulgarian businesswoman known as the ‘Cryptoqueen’, it was as if she had simply disappeared into thin air – just like the £3.3 billion she stole from the estimated one million people worldwide who sunk money into OneCoin, her fake cryptocurrency.
When she vanished in Athens in 2017, Ignatova was being hunted by international crime-fighting agencies which said she had used OneCoin to pull off the financial scam of the century – a pyramid fraud matched only by Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme for its scale and audacity.
In 2019 she was charged on five counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. And on Thursday, she was placed on the FBI’s ‘10 Most Wanted’ list – becoming the only woman on it – with a $100,000 (£83,000) reward on offer for any information leading to her arrest.
It is by far the biggest escalation in the case. Asked why the hunt has suddenly been stepped up, an FBI spokesman said: ‘We think the public is in the best position to provide information about her whereabouts and activities.’
While rumours abound, the truth is that, since that October morning five years ago, no one has known for sure where Ignatova has been – or even whether she is still alive.
To those on the trail of Ruja Ignatova, the glamorous Bulgarian businesswoman known as the ‘Cryptoqueen’, it was as if she had simply disappeared into thin air
My theory is that she is living the high life on board a private superyacht bobbing around in the Mediterranean
However, following my four-year international investigation with BBC producer Georgia Catt, the story of what happened to the missing Cryptoqueen can be pieced together for the first time.
Based on hundreds of sources, including insiders in the world of luxury yachts and penthouses that Ignatova inhabited, my theory is that she had been living in her native Bulgaria, then later Dubai, where she has been linked to a multi-million-pound mansion in a high-security complex.
And when the Gulf state, at first a welcoming haven, became too hot to handle, I believe Ignatova set off again – for international waters. My theory is that she is living the high life on board a private superyacht bobbing around in the Mediterranean.
NOT that you would recognise her from the infamous photo in the Bulgarian edition of Forbes magazine that lent her credibility as she lured in victims – including many in Britain – to OneCoin, billing it as a more user-friendly, and far more lucrative, alternative to Bitcoin.
For Ignatova, 42, is believed to have undergone plastic surgery to alter her appearance, as well as dyeing her dark hair blonde and losing weight. Having become mixed up with some rather unsavoury associates, including influential Russians and Bulgarian crime syndicates, there is, of course, the possibility that Ignatova is dead, dispatched in a hit job ordered by a disgruntled investor.
But multiple sightings – some as recently as last summer – suggest otherwise. Armed with a new face, a new name, and access to endless amounts of money, the astonishing theory is that the Cryptoqueen is floating on the high seas where no police force has the power to arrest her, while those who helped her get away with her scam face serious jail time.
On Thursday, she was placed on the FBI’s ‘10 Most Wanted’ list – becoming the only woman on it – with a $100,000 (£83,000) reward on offer for any information leading to her arrest
Ignatova was last seen publicly in 2017 after arriving incognito on the 7am Ryanair flight to Athens from Sofia, Bulgaria. Her escape plan had been hatched in advance, as she realised that the crypto empire she founded in 2014 was about to implode, having sold more than a billion fake coins.
By 2017, not only had investors started to ask questions about why OneCoin had no ‘blockchain’ computer technology that gave it a legitimacy as a trading currency, but the FBI was sniffing around what they suspected was a giant pyramid scheme based on smoke and mirrors. As the net closed in, colleagues found Ignatova increasingly nervous and unusually agitated. She started to juggle several mobile phones and became paranoid about being kidnapped by angry investors. One close friend recalls she was even afraid for her life.
Sensing one day her house of cards would collapse, Ignatova had already emailed her co-founder, Sebastian Greenwood, with a plan. ‘Exit strategy,’ she had written. ‘Take the money and run, and let someone else take the blame.’
In the first three years following Ignatova’s disappearance, Georgia and I travelled all over the world to track down the charismatic criminal. Our search took us to the OneCoin HQ in Sofia, to the Black Sea resort of Sozopol, where her £6 million yacht the Davina was anchored, and to Amsterdam, Scotland, Romania, Germany and Uganda. At first, our hunt was frustrating, blocked by false leads and dead ends. Ignatova was everywhere and nowhere; it was always rumour and speculation – and, infuriatingly, no one would go on the record.
Our task was made even harder because Ignatova had started having plastic surgery from 2015 and, by the time she absconded, looked very different to the woman who had set up OneCoin the previous year. A top London surgeon explained to us how someone with her vast wealth could easily buy new cheeks, a new jawline, a new nose and new lips. Although she would still be recognisable on close inspection, at a quick glance she could pass for anyone, he said.
For Ignatova, 42, is believed to have undergone plastic surgery to alter her appearance, as well as dyeing her dark hair blonde and losing weight
But gradually, Georgia and I were able to piece together Ignatova’s movements and, by late 2020, we had a ‘best guess’.
After she stepped off her Ryanair flight on October 25, 2017, she travelled to Thessaloniki, Northern Greece, where she part-owned a tobacco factory. Then, after a couple of days, she did the last thing anyone expected – doubled back and returned to her native Bulgaria.
One plausible theory is that a notorious Bulgarian drug smuggler, Hristoforos ‘Taki’ Amanatidis, aka ‘the Cocaine King’, helped arrange safe passage by car on a smuggling route between the two countries. However, the German police raid on OneCoin’s Sofia HQ in January 2018 persuaded her that Bulgaria was not the safe haven she thought it was. Over the next few months, sightings of Ignatova were reported multiple times in Dubai: in a luxury shopping mall, at a restaurant, and on a private yacht. Sources told us that Ignatova, who held a residency permit, was living quite openly in Dubai at that time.
She was confident
