The crypto queen Ruja Ignatova is celebrated like a pop star by her thousands of fans for her invention OneCoin. The lawyer cheated hundreds of thousands of investors with her alleged digital currency. FOCUS Online has insight into the investigation into the fugitive German-Bulgarian.
Everyone stand up, the whipper orders. The hit by the US singer Alicia Keys thunders from the speakers in the Wembley Arena in London: “This girl is on fire.” At the edge of the stage, real flashes of fire shoot up, as Ruja Ignatova in a tailor-made red evening dress with a long train and lots of glitter enters the stage. The shrieks and applause suggest a pop star, but it’s “just” a lawyer who got thousands of fans excited in February 2016.
“We are more than just a currency. We are creating a world around this currency,” shouts the Bulgarian-born German, who is hailed as the “crypto queen” by her fans. One graph and table after the other is superimposed on the screen in the background. All numbers promise mega wins. OneCoin, the invention of Ignatova, will become the new star among Internet payment methods, better and more successful than the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
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“We currently have more than two million active users. And in two years at the latest, over a million retailers will also accept OneCoin, including giants like Google and Microsoft,” she announced in the 2016 appearance. So far, she has already collected 4.4 billion euros from investors worldwide. “But we want eight billion. And we are all already there.”
A meeting room of the public prosecutor’s office in Bielefeld in May of this year. Things are much less spectacular here. At the head of the room are black-and-white photos of the lawyers who have worked in the agency. Some are provided with a mourning ribbon. Pennants hang next to the pictures, above them a wall clock with a gold border. A bright yellow bathtub duck is enthroned on the upper edge. This is where the shards left behind by the glamorous “Crypto-Ruja” are swept up. Their alleged digital currency was a dream, the ever-increasing market value was manipulated.
“We are telling the people shit,” she wrote to an accomplice in an internal email. A gigantic scam that is unparalleled in the world and in which hundreds of thousands of investors were scammed, in Germany alone there were around 60,000. The damage estimates vary widely. US authorities are talking about around four billion dollars. And the 42-year-old company founder is on the run.
She was last seen in Athens on October 25, 2017, where she was picked up by two Russians at the airport and has since disappeared without a trace, reports the Bielefeld public prosecutor, who is supposed to clarify the case with other investigative authorities worldwide, including the American FBI. He does not want his name to be read because he fears for his family’s safety.
The prosecutor got caught up in the global disaster through a company in nearby Greven. From there, the German distribution of the fantasy currency was coordinated. Investment packages ranging from 100 to 120,000 euros were offered, depending on the purchasing power of those interested. The public prosecutor’s office in Bielefeld has listed around 88,000 transfers with a total of 320 million euros.
For the sake of simplicity, the indictment and the criminal proof were concentrated on 70 German investors who were heard. The suspects transferred their deposits to a bank on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean, for example. The Bielefeld investigator reports that the recipient was a fund, which in turn bought noble properties in London, for example, via trustees for the mastermind Ingnatova.
But most of the money is gone. And now the OneCoin trial at the Münster district court against alleged accomplices of the crypto queen from Greven has also burst. Because two judges are permanently ill, the taking of evidence must be repeated after 19 days of negotiations with 38 witnesses and two experts. The new main hearing is scheduled to start in mid-August.
A complete bankruptcy, for the deceived and the investigators. And a gigantic fraud that can hardly be explained rationally. Perhaps it was because OneCoin buyers could also become sellers. With each transaction, a hefty commission in OneCoin beckoned along with another promise of astronomical profits. Because many were supposedly able to earn money, apparently none of the investors noticed that they had fallen for a classic, fraudulent fast-ball system?
The comparison with bitcoins played a major role, says the responsible public prosecutor. “It was suggested that anyone who missed the bitcoin hype would now get a second chance to be part of it from the start.” A “kind of gold rush mood” broke out. And that in a digital investment “community” that acted “almost like a cult”. “I don’t want to say that Ignatova was idolized by these people, but she was already considered an outstanding person,” explains the Westphalian investigator.
Ruja Ignatova, born in Bulgaria in 1980, immigrated to Germany with her parents at the age of ten, showed her talents early on. According to research by the online magazine “BuzzFeed”, the girl skipped two classes at school. The high school graduate studied law in Constance. She completed her master’s degree at the elite university of Cambridge and then joined a renowned management consultancy. In 2010, together with her father, Ignatova took over the ailing casting plant in Waltenhofen, Bavaria. The initial enthusiasm of the workforce subsided when the new boss tried to sell the factory machines to Bulgaria. The secret resale of the already insolvent company at the beginning of 2012 caused particular resentment among the employees.
Immediately afterwards, Ignatova went abroad, probably first to London and then to Dubai. In April 2016, the fugitive in Augsburg was sentenced in absentia for delaying bankruptcy and fraud. The public prosecutor’s office spoke of “considerable criminal energy” at the time. From a “positive social prognosis” the court. In the meantime, Ignatova and a US accomplice had made the big hit with the fantasy currency OneCoin on the virtual investment market. When the bubble burst, Ignatova disappeared from the scene for good. Since then, numerous law enforcement agencies have been looking for the lawyer. For example, target investigators from the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The professor of economics emphasizes that clear activities have been identified in Russia, the Middle East and South America. “In the European countries, however, around 80 percent of the accounts have mostly not been active since 2017.” The expert recently logged into one of the large one-coin Facebook bubbles again still active and there are still people who fall for it.” In the meantime, however, private individuals are looking to generate new business with the model. But where is the inventor of the gigantic one-coin scam? Researcher Hönig suspects “that the crypto queen who went into hiding lives in the Middle East with a new – changed identity.”
