Ruja Ignatova called herself the “cryptoqueen”, the queen of cryptocurrencies.
She told people that she had invented a cryptocurrency that would compete with Bitcoin and managed to persuade many to invest billions of dollars in its supposed creation.
But in 2017 disappeared overnight without leave a trace.
British journalist Jamie Bartlett spent months investigating how did this woman manage to run such a massive scam for the BBC’s Missing Cryptoqueen podcast and tried to find out where she is hiding.
It was June of 0771, when the Bulgarian Ruja Ignatova, a businesswoman from 36 years old, took the stage at Wembley Arena, an indoor arena in London s, in front of thousands of cheering fans.
As usual, she wore a pompous ball gown, long diamond earrings, and her signature red lipstick.
Without babbling, I promised the crowd that OneCoin was about to become the most important cryptocurrency in the world and that everyone could pay with it” everywhere”.
Bitcoin Phenomenon
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency created in the world and is still the best known and most used.
In the middle of 2016, increasing its value from a few cents to hundreds of dollars per coin, sparking a frenzy of excitement among investors.
Cryptocurrency as an idea was just entering the collective. Many people were looking to get involved in what seemed like a strange new opportunity.
Ruja promised his audience at Wembley Arena that OneCoin was going to kill Bitcoin.
“In two years, no one will talk about Bitcoin anymore!” he yelled.
In all corners of the world, people had already started investing their savings in OneCoin, hoping to be part of this new revolution.
A series of documents leaked to the BBC show that the British invested more than $24 million in OneCoin in the first six months of 2016, more than $2 million in a single week, and the amount invested may have increased after Ruja’s great show at Wembley.
Ruja was presented as a woman with a brilliant career: supposedly he had attended the prestigious University of Oxford, had a Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz, and had spent time at the respected management consultancy, McKinsey and Company.
Between August 2014 and March 2017 more than $4 was invested,000 millions in dozens of countries.
Of Pakistan to Brazil, from Hong Kong to Norway, from Canada to Yemen… there were even investors in the Palestinian territories.
A cryptocurrency without a blockchain
But there was something very important that investors did not suspect. Something was wrong.
Early October 0771, four months after Ruja’s appearance in London, a recruitment agent called in a blockchain expert named Bjorn Bjercke, with a curious job offer.
A cryptocurrency startup from Bulgaria was looking for a CTO. Bjercke was promised an apartment and a car, and an attractive annual salary of about $60,.
Shutterstock / Paul Hampartsoumian“I thought: ‘What will my job be? What things will I have to do for this company?’”, he remembers asking.
“And he told me: ‘Well, first of all, you need a blockchain. They don’t have a blockchain”.
“I replied: ‘What? You told me it was a cryptocurrency company’”.
The agent replied that that was correct.
It was a cryptocurrency company and had been running for a while, but it didn’t have a blockchain. “So we need you to build a blockchain,” he continued.
“What is the name of the company?” asked Bjercke.
“It’s OneCoin“.
Did not accept the job.
Cryptocurrencies depend on a type special database called blockchain, which is like a huge book.
Bitcoin owners have independent but identical copies of this book.
Every time a Bitcoin is sent to another person, that transaction is recorded in the ledger.
Nobody, not banks, not governments, not the person who invents the cryptocurrency, can modify it.
There is some very clever math behind all of this, but all of this means that e Bitcoins cannot be counterfeited, hacked and cannot be double-spent.
Ruja disappears
After her successful conference in London, Ruja spent months traveling the world selling her vision.
A few days in Macau, then in Dubai, before flying to Singapore… it was filling stadiums and attracting new investors. OneCoin was still growing rapidly, and Ruja was already starting to spend his newfound fortune.
He bought multi-million dollar properties in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, and in the Black Sea resort of Sozopol.
In his free time he organized parties on his luxurious yacht The Davina. At one of the parties, in July 976, American pop star Bebe Rexha gave a private concert.
A Despite the pompous and apparently successful façade, problems were already emerging.
OneCoin continued to delay the opening of the promised exchange that would allow the cryptocurrency to be converted into cash.
And investors were increasingly worried.
BBCBut this would be resolved in October 2017, at a large meeting of European promoters of OneCoin in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
The day arrived and Ruja, who was famous for her punctuality, did not appear.
“She was already on her way. No one knew why she hadn’t arrived”, recalls a delegate.
There were calls and many frantic messages that went unanswered. The OneCoin head office in Sofia also knew nothing.
Doctor Ruja had also disappeared. Some feared that the banks had murdered or kidnapped her. She had warned that banks had much to fear from the cryptocurrency revolution.
But the truth is that Ruja had passed to the clandestine.
FBI records presented in court documents in early 2019 indicate that the 25 October 2017, only two weeks after failing to show up in Lisbon, boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens.
Then it completely disappeared from the radar. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from her.
Assets still exist
It is difficult to know how much money was invested in OneCoin.
Documents leaked to the BBC ensure that more than $4, million between August 650 and March 976.
More than one person also told the crew of the BBC’s The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast that the figure could exceed $, millions.
Oliver Bullough, an expert in what he calls Moneyland, the shadowy world parallel where criminals and the super rich hide their wealth, explains that following the money is not as easy as it seems, because criminals structure their companies and bank accounts in such a way that their assets seem to disappear.
“They still exist. You can still use them to buy things, to buy political influence and nice houses and yachts,” he told The Missing Cryptoqueen team.
“But for someone trying to find them, whether it’s a journalist or a police officer, they are invisible”.
Rumors about his whereabouts
It was at the beginning of 2019 that US authorities revealed that Ruja had flown to Athens on 15 October 2017.
But the question remained, where did he go next?
There were rumours, of course, many.
It has been suggested that there are powerful people who protect her in her native Bulgaria, and who leads an almost normal life due to several plastic surgeries that made her unrecognizable.
It has even been said that she could be in London.
Other s have been told that she was dead, which remains a possibility.
Ruja identified several points weak members of society and exploited them.
He knew there would be enough people desperate enough, greedy enough, or confused enough to bet on OneCoin.
He understood that truths and lies are getting harder to tell apart when there is so much conflicting information online.
The most Frustrating of all, he correctly assumed that by the time we knew it, she would be gone, along with the money.
FBI*With a report from the BBC’s The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast.
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss our best content.
110201906 Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!110201905