The hunt for a ‘Cryptoqueen’ wanted over her role in one of the world’s biggest ever frauds has shifted to South Africa.
Ruja Ignatova has been on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list since 2022 for what it called ‘one of the largest global fraud schemes in history’.
She founded OneCoin in 2014 and tricked people into investing in the cryptocurrency trading company.
But it turned out to be a scam, with more than three million victims cheated out of at least £3.6 billion ($4.5 billion) in the Ponzi scheme.
Last September, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, who co-founded OneCoin with Ignatova, was sentenced to 20 years in US prison for his role in the con.
Bulgarian-born Ignatova’s whereabouts have been unknown since October 2017, when she travelled from Sofia to Athens after being charged and a federal warrant issued for her arrest.
The FBI recently upped its bounty for her arrest to a £4 million ($5 million), saying she is likely to have undergone plastic surgery to alter her appearance.
Soon after she vanished, rumours swirled that Ignatova had been killed by former accomplices in the Bulgarian underworld who dismembered her body and dumped it in the Ionian Sea.
But investigators in Germany now say they believe she is hiding out in one of South Africa’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.
‘We are working with the hypothesis that Ruja Ignatova is still alive,’ Sabine Dässel, from the North Rhine-Westphalia state office of criminal investigation (LKA), told a new documentary about the con.
Investigators remain uncertain of her exact whereabouts, she told ‘Die Kryptoqueen’ on German broadcaster WDR, but said clues pointed heavily to Cape Town.
Ignatova’s brother Konstantin took over her business and was spotted in Cape Town in the months following her disappearance.
He has since co-operated with the FBI investigation, telling special agents his sister carries £500,000,000 in stolen investor funds which she may have used to pay for plastic surgery, bribing officials and creating a new identity.
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