Ruja Ignatova, the creator of the Onecoin crypto pyramid, is reported to have been murdered in Greece in 2018. She has been missing since November of that year. According to an article by the Bureau For Investigative Reporting And Data (Bird.bg), the evidence for this conclusion comes from a leaked police report. “The missing Cryptoqueen” has been the subject of much speculation since her disappearance.
The Possibility of a Mediterranean Murder of the Onecoin Mastermind
The founder of the notorious Onecoin Ponzi scheme has been dead for some time now. In November 2018, a Bulgarian website known as the Bureau For Investigative Reporting And Data (Bird.bg) released details from an investigation into a homicide from the year before, conducted by a former senior police officer from Sofia.
The ex-head of the criminal police department in the Bulgarian capital was shot in March 2022. An informant’s report, secured in the victim’s home, states that Ruja Ignatova was found dead on a yacht in the Ionian Sea. It is said that her body was mutilated and dumped into the water, on orders from a drug lord.
In response to a query from the Bird news outlet, the City Prosecutor’s Office clarified that the reported document is not considered a valid piece of evidence in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code, as it is not signed or dated, and no details of the author are provided.
The correspondence also states that “the aforementioned sheets of paper” were found in the home of a murder victim, making it impossible to verify the circumstances by questioning a witness.
Onecoin was launched as a multi-level marketing network in 2014 and quickly rose to prominence, with a fake cryptocurrency. It is believed that over 3,000,000 investors around the world were defrauded of more than $4 billion. Ignatova, a Bulgarian-born German citizen, was last seen on October 25, 2017, at Athens airport, having arrived from Sofia. Last October, the BBC reported that she was being investigated by police.
Dubbed “the missing Cryptoqueen”, Ignatova is wanted by Interpol, Europol, and the US Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI). Previous media reports have suggested that she may have been killed or is still alive and well, having undergone cosmetic surgery to alter her appearance. In July 2022, Greek news outlets reported that police attempted to apprehend Ignatova after receiving intelligence that she was in the country.
Her brother and co-founder, Konstantin Ignatov, was arrested in Los Angeles in 2019 and pleaded guilty to charges related to Onecoin. To secure witness protection in the US, he will have to pay a fee. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, another co-founder of the scam, who is a citizen of Sweden and the UK, also pleaded guilty in December 2022. This week, news broke that Ruja’s ex-boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta, was sentenced to five years in prison for laundering the proceeds from the fraud.
What do you think about the reported fate of the ‘Cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
