Ruja Ignatova, the queen of digital currencies or professional fraud

Roja Ignatova is the only woman on the FBI’s top 10 fugitives list. The mastermind of the OneCoin big fraud case, who is also known as the “Queen of Digital Currencies”, has registered the biggest and most successful fraud in the modern century; So that now a reward of 100,000 dollars has been set for introducing him to the FBI.

According to recent reports, high-ranking government officials in the United Arab Emirates and Bulgaria have been very supportive of Roja Ignatova. These supports have made him always stay one step ahead of the police and live in his luxurious villa with 4 billion dollars of wealth that he stole from people.

In this article, we are going to take a look at Roja Ignatova’s big scam. The queen of digital currencies And let’s consider the current situation of this controversial case. So stay with us until the end of the article.

Who is Ruja Ignatova?

Roja Ignatova is a very intelligent and at the same time very dangerous person. This Bulgarian-German writer received his degrees from the universities of Oxford and Konstanz (Germany). Ignatova is fluent in several languages ​​and has appeared in many prestigious business magazines and has also given a speech at The Economist newspaper conference.

She chose the title of the queen of digital currencies and is still known by that name. In addition to the title of queen, Roja Ignatova usually presented a queen-like image with her beautiful and flamboyant clothes and expensive jewelry. In Jamie Bartlett’s “The Lost Queen of Cryptocurrency” podcast about Roja Ignatova, people who dealt with her and her organization also claimed that Roja always “looked like a queen”. However, this attractive appearance is only one aspect of Roja Ignatius.

Read more: What is digital currency?

Another aspect of Ignatova’s personality is the criminal genius that has made her now on the list of criminals pursued by the European Union’s police security services (Europol) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The digital currency OneCoin, the project she launched, was one of the biggest scams in history, making Roja Ignatova the “queen of digital currency scams”.

OneCoin; The biggest scam of the century

OneCoin is a cryptocurrency company founded by Roja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood. The company has branches all over the world, including Hong Kong and Dubai, although its head office is located in Sofia. The company’s digital currency was named OneCoin; A name that happens to be very suitable for this currency.

This company used a very complex and effective strategy called multi-level marketing (MLM) similar to pyramid schemes; Projects that had many members around the world and were able to attract billions of dollars in capital. It is believed that the total assets attracted by OneCoin are more than 15 billion dollars; A huge figure that makes OneCoin the biggest and most successful scam in modern history.

VanCoin was like family!

What makes VanCoin’s story unique is the beliefs and customs of this company, which can be considered similar to religious cults. The OneLife network in this company tried to establish a strong emotional bond between its members; Whenever Roja Ignatova was present among the members, you could hear from them that they consider this group as a family.

Another point is that they labeled people outside the network as haters and tried to distance network members from people outside the team. According to hearsay, many people interviewed by Jamie Bartlett on the BBC podcast said they had “faith” in OneCoin. This meant that they believed in OneCoin so deeply that they were willing to auction their houses and land to invest in it.

Furthermore, VanCoin promised something more than family or emotional connection or purpose. Ruja Ignatova, who was aware of the deception of the members, took full advantage of this situation. He crafted a story and presented OneCoin as a unique opportunity for unbanked people to challenge the status quo with fundamental changes in assets or banking or even the world.

It is important to know that the cheated people were those who did not accept financial services or were deprived of using these services. Some of them were those who lived in developing countries; Where proper and reliable financial services were not provided. In other words, Ruja Ignatova had completely identified her audience; In particular, he realized their desperation and took advantage of this desperation and disorder of their living conditions.

After a while, the situation at OneCoin became suspicious. Members could see Bitcoin being used instead of OneCoin to purchase various items. The company justified this issue to investors by saying that the possibility of buying and selling OneCoin is in progress; But it has been postponed due to some problems; The issue that ultimately led to the creation of the Dealshaker platform.

Onecoin introduced Dealshaker as a major exchange; But in reality, such a thing was not true. Dealshaker was an online market like Amazon; A special place to buy goods for people who have OneCoin. However, no product could be found on this website, and even if someone found something, they would have to pay Euros in addition to OneCoin to complete the purchase.

However, the story does not end here. The factor that differentiates digital currencies is the possibility of storing them in the blockchain network. Blockchain technology is what assures us that the rules of digital currencies are applied correctly.

Some time later, it became clear that OneCoin never used the blockchain. In fact, they used a centralized and common database that was simple and could be changed at any moment. In other words, the exchange they claimed was not real, the transactions were not real, their digital currency was not real, at the same time there was no blockchain, and in a word, everything was a fraud and fake.

What happened to Roja Ignatova?

Roja Ignatova was supposed to participate in an event in Portugal in 2017; But he did not attend this event and was never seen in any other official event. Apparently, the reason for Ignatova’s absence in the mentioned event was that the man she was in contact with was under the surveillance of the FBI and she was afraid that the man would exchange her with the FBI.

Since then, Europol has announced a 5,000-euro reward for anyone with information leading to Ignatova’s arrest. However, some believe that this reward is not worth risking their safety for. Especially considering Roja Ignatova’s personal sources and the possibility that she is connected to organized crime in Eastern Europe.

In contrast, the FBI has promised a reward of 100,000 dollars for information that leads to Ignatova’s arrest. However, there is still no trace of the digital currency queen and her exact location; But there are theories about his whereabouts.

How much money did Ruja Ignatova pocket?

Ignatova had raised billions of dollars. There are no exact statistics about the amount he received; But it is believed that Roja Ignatova stole about 4-5 billion dollars.

Where is Ruja Ignatova?

There are speculations that Roja Ignatova may be hiding in her luxurious villa in Dubai. Jamie Bartlett raised this possibility in a special BBC podcast. Some reports also report that he has been seen in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand.

Documents obtained by the BBC show that Roja Ignatova was working with Sheikh Faisal bin Sultan Al Qasimi, a member of the Al Qasimi royal family in the UAE, to release funds that had been frozen on suspicion of money laundering. Apparently, Ignatova bought a 20 million dollar villa in the UAE; Where it seems to have been hidden for about 5 years.

According to the BBC, he signed a million dollar contract with Sheikh Saud Bin Faisal Al Qasimi. In 2015, Sheikh Saud gave Roja Ignatova four hardware wallets containing 230,000 bitcoins (worth 48.5 million euros at that time). On the other hand, Roja gave three checks from Mashreq Bank to Sheikh Saud, which had a total value of 210 million UAE dirhams (equivalent to 50 million euros).

Meanwhile, the most shocking aspect of the case is the evidence that elements within the Bulgarian government were helping the OneCoin fraudsters stay one step ahead of the international police. These new revelations highlight the potential for massive global financial fraud to rise in the digital age. In fact, the enormous financial power of fraudsters can easily attract the participation of very powerful and influential figures, including corrupt government officials.