A $5 million reward is being offered by the U.S. State Department for information that results in the arrest or conviction of Ruja Ignatova, the founder of OneCoin and dubbed the “Cryptoqueen,” who disappeared in Athens in 2017. The previous reward of $250,000 offered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been increased to a new amount announced on Wednesday, which is offered under the State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program. In 2022, Ignatova was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
In addition, authorities in Ignatova’s home country of Bulgaria declared on Wednesday that Ignatova would face an indictment virtually for her involvement in the cryptocurrency ponzi scheme, which defrauded investors worldwide of an estimated $4 billion between 2014 and the scheme’s early 2017 collapse. OneCoin did not actually involve any cryptocurrencies; instead, it operated through a network of promoters who asked for investments in exchange for fictitious tokens. Ignatova and her team artificially inflate the perceived value of OneCoin by creating new coins automatically. OneCoin has been dubbed “one of the largest global fraud schemes in history” by the State Department.
Ignatova, a German national, is also charged with crimes in Germany, India, and the United States in addition to the counts she is facing in Bulgaria. Because of their involvement in the scam, a number of Ignatova’s former OneCoin partners received prison sentences. Karl Greenwood, a co-founder of OneCoin, was given a 20-year prison term and $300 million in forfeiture last year for his misdeeds. Irina Dilkinska, a citizen of Bulgaria, and Mark Scott, an American, were two of the fraud project’s attorneys. Dilkinska received a four-year prison sentence, while Scott received a ten-year sentence.
Ignatova was last seen on a flight from Sofia, Bulgaria to Athens in the fall of 2017, not long after she was indicted in the United States. The FBI has speculated that Ignatova might be traveling in the Middle East or Eastern Europe using a German passport or that she may have had plastic surgery to change the way she looks. Rumors also suggest that Ignatova may have died. Ignatova was allegedly killed and mutilated in 2018 on a yacht in the Ionian Sea at the behest of a Bulgarian drug baron known as “Taki,” according to a 2023 claim from a Bulgarian media outlet. However, this report has never been independently confirmed.