Ruja Ignatova called herself the 'Cryptoqueen' and touted her company, OneCoin, as a lucrative rival to Bitcoin in the growing cryptocurrency market.
WASHINGTON — Ruja Ignatova strode onto the stage in a flowing burgundy ball gown adorned with black sparkles. Beams of light flashed, fireballs erupted and Alicia Keys'"Girl on Fire" blared through the speakers.
Sixteen months later, Ignatova boarded a plane in Sofia, Bulgaria, and vanished. She hasn't been seen since. "In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless ... lies were designed with one goal, to get everyday people all over the world to part with their hard-earned money."Since Ignatova disappeared in October 2017, her face has been plastered on the FBI website and across major news outlets worldwide. She's also one of the most wanted fugitives in Europe.
But court documents detail a mind-blowing narrative: how Ignatova and her OneCoin co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, were allegedly aware from the start that their ambitious venture was a Ponzi scheme. She also proposed an exit strategy should the company fail, saying in a 2014 email to Greenwood that they should"take the money and run and blame somebody else for this."Ruja Ignatova, 42, is a German citizen but was born in Bulgaria, where her father was an engineer and her mother was a teacher.
After studying European law at Oxford University, Ignatova landed a job in Sofia as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, the international management consulting firm. It is a largely unregulated and highly volatile industry, and expert opinions on the viability of crypto run the gamut. Advocates broadly envision a future in which economies run on digital currencies validated by the community of users rather by a central bank. Critics dismiss it as a Ponzi scheme or, at minimum, a highly risky investment.
A buying frenzy ensued. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, investors gave OneCoin more than $4 billion, federal prosecutors said, citing records obtained in the course of their investigation. Some $50 million came from investors in the US, according to court documents.
OneCoin's value was not based on market supply and demand like other cryptocurrency, prosecutors said, but simply manipulated privately by OneCoin itself.The facade started cracking in 2016 when investors had a hard time selling their OneCoins to recoup their original investments, court documents say.
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