Who Is The Queen Of Crypto?

Do you know the woman once entertained as the queen of crypto is now among the FBI's top ten most wanted fugitives? Ruja Ignatova is a 42-year-old German citizen born in Bulgaria. She created hype as a former crypto pioneer who went missing in October 2017. Ruja was found fraudulent in her OneCoin crypto token in a $4 billion Ponzi Scheme. Want to learn more about Crypto trading and investments? Join News Spy AI system and get a whole new experience. Start your investment journey today!

Who Is Ruja Ignatova? 

Ruja Ignatova was born on May 30th, 1980, in Bulgaria. Her family emigrated to Germany when she was ten years old. She graduated from Oxford University with a law degree and the University of Konstanz in Germany with a Ph.D. in private international law. She then worked for McKinsey & Company for a duration as well. Ruja Ignatova is fluent in German, English, and Bulgarian.

Author Jamie Bartlett chronicled her meteoric climb to fame as an entrepreneur in his book "The Missing Crypto Queen." Ruja Ignatova met her future husband while attending college on a scholarship in Konstanz, Germany. She planned to amass $1 million in assets by turning 30.

Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She convinced the people that she had created a cryptocurrency to compete with Bitcoin and brought around them to invest billions of dollars in OneCoin. It was a massive scam, and the disgraced crypto queen was lost to sight with $4 billion in investors. 

How Did "Crypto Queen" Land On The FBI's Most Wanted List? 

Ruja Ignatova released OneCoin in 2014, intending to dethrone Bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency. At one time, OneCoin claimed to have three million investors and had operations in dozens of countries, including the United States.

She made possibly over $4 billion between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the third quarter of 2016. It was all from selling a fake cryptocurrency with no real value and couldn't be used to buy anything by tapping a global network. OneCoin was called a " Ponzi scheme" in which initial investors are promised returns on their money by receiving payments from later investors.

A report states that Ignatova had $500 million in bank accounts in Dubai after victims launched a lawsuit against OneCoin. Although the exact value of her crypto holdings is unclear, the outlet discovered that she was paid 230,000 Bitcoins by a member of the Emirati royal family in 2015. As foreign authorities closed in on Ignatova's group in 2017, she was lost in sight. 

On October 25, 2017, she left Sofia, Bulgaria, and was last seen in Athens, Greece. In 2019, an indictment was released in the United States against her for wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud. Ignatova was added to Europol's most-wanted list on May 11, and a reward of 5,000 euros was offered for information leading to her capture.

The Scene She Left Behind 

When authorities discovered the scam, Ignatova disappeared, leaving her business associates to clean up the mess. A July 2018 arrest warrant was issued for co-founder Sebastian Greenwood. He is confined due to his guilty pleas on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to launder money. He will be given his punishment in April.

In March 2019, police arrested Ignatova's sibling, business partner, and co-conspirator Konstantin Ignatov on charges of wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February. After the controversy broke, OneCoin stopped functioning and took its website offline.

Where is The Crypto Queen Now? Is She Alive? 

Nobody knows yet about Ruja Ignatova's whereabouts. Since Ignatova vanished without a trace in 2017, there have been many speculations about her whereabouts. Some say she uses a forged visa to get around, while others think she's been able to blend in with the locals by getting plastic surgery. 

Conclusion

There has been no word from the Cryptoqueen since she stepped off a plane in Greece over five years ago. Cryptocurrency has changed many lives, and bitcoin trading software benefits a booming crypto journey. Honesty brings success to any business, and scams & dishonesty has nothing good in the end. The woman called crypto queen, wearing long designer gowns sparkling with diamonds, is now considered a disgraced queen of crypto. She is now facing multiple fraud accusations and has been on the run from the FBI for the past five years.