Ruja Ignatova, also known as “Cryptoqueen,” has been added to the FBI’s list of the 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, and a $100,000 reward has been offered for information that would result in her capture.
After a grand jury indicted Ignatova in October 2017, a warrant for her arrest was issued. The accusations of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to engage money laundering, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud were included in a superseding indictment that was released the following year.
The numerous accusations come from her alleged participation in a global operation that she established and launched in 2014 called OneCoin, which was used to defraud investors out of more than $4 billion. Ignatova is accused of luring investors with “false statements and representations” and directing them to “transmit investment funds to OneCoin accounts in order to purchase OneCoin packages.”
Ignatova’s OneCoin reportedly functioned without blockchain, a characteristic generally present in other cryptocurrency operations. OneCoin had no actual value, in contrast to genuine cryptocurrencies that keep track of the transactions of their investors, according to FBI associate director-in-charge William Sweeney Jr. It did not provide investors with a way to track their money and could not be used to make purchases. In actuality, only the organization’s founders and collaborators stood to gain from its existence.