The FBI has added Ignatova to its list of the 10 most wanted fugitives for allegedly defrauding investors of more than $ 4 billion through OneCoin, a cryptocurrency company he helped start in 2014. The move comes after Europol added Ignatova, 42, to the list of most wanted earlier this year. “It’s an important tool for us, the list of the top 10,” FBI Assistant Director Michael Driscoll told reporters during a news briefing on Thursday. “We believe the public is in the best position to help.” The FBI has added “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova to the list of the ten most wanted fugitives. FBI Ignatova, a Bulgarian lawyer, claimed to have invented a cryptocurrency to compete with Bitcoin. She and others allegedly made false statements while seeking investment and promoting OneCoin through a multi-tier marketing strategy, according to the FBI. OneCoin also claimed to have a private blockchain, as opposed to a public and verifiable one that other virtual currencies have, and the value of OneCoin was determined by the company rather than market demand, the FBI said. The FBI claims that Ignatova eventually persuaded investors to give her billions of dollars, taking advantage of the cryptocurrency uproar before disappearing in 2017 following a federal arrest warrant. “He has a lot of money and he hit the road pretty fast,” Driscoll said. Investigators believe Ignatova may have been informed that she was under investigation by US and international authorities. On October 25, 2017, he traveled from Sofia, Bulgaria to Athens, Greece and has not appeared since, according to the FBI. Ignatova was charged in February 2018 with a charge of conspiracy to commit electronic fraud, electronic fraud, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit title fraud and title fraud. The FBI has added “Cryptoqueen” Ruja Ignatova to the list of the ten most wanted fugitives. FBI Ignatova is the only woman on the FBI’s list of the 10 most wanted fugitives and is the 11th in its 72-year history, said the FBI, which offers a reward of up to $ 100,000 for information leading to her arrest. She was known to travel throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East and may have had plastic surgery to change her appearance, the FBI said. Speaking at an event in London in June 2016, Ignatova told the crowd that she believed OneCoin would become the “no. 1 cryptocurrency worldwide “. Although in an email to her co-founder, Ignatova reportedly described an exit strategy for OneCoin as: “Take the money and run and blame someone else for it …” according to federal prosecutors. Several others have also been charged in connection with OneCoin, including Ignatova’s brother Konstantin Ignatov, who ran the business after it disappeared from the public eye. He was arrested in March 2019 on charges of wiretapping resulting from his role in the “international pyramid scheme,” federal prosecutors said. He has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies and is awaiting sentencing. Lawyer Mark Scott was convicted in 2019 of his role in laundering $ 400 million in fraudulent proceeds on behalf of OneCoin’s leadership and is expected to be convicted, prosecutors said. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, another co-founder of OneCoin, is awaiting trial on fraud charges.
