In mid-February, BIRD (Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data) shared a police document that recorded Ruja Ignatova, dubbed the “Cryptoqueen”, who was murdered by a notorious Bulgaria drug lord.
Documents were collected in the safe of a police officer (murdered in March 2022). Among them, authorities found a page-long report related to Ignatova.
The report states that the brother-in-law of crime boss Christophoros Amanatidis, aka Taki, while drunk on a yacht in Cuba detailed how Taki ordered the murder of Ignatova.
According to reports, Ignatova was killed on a yacht in the Ionian Sea in November 2018. Her body was chopped up and thrown into the sea.
But Atanas Tchobanov, a journalist at BIRD who worked with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to publish the Pandora Papers, told Fortune that scenario was just “a hypothesis.”
Ignatova’s brother objected to the document posted on BIRD. This person claimed that Ignatova contacted her brother in early 2019.
In January this year, Ignatova is said to have sold a 4-bedroom penthouse in London (UK) for $13 million. However, in fact, the auction was organized by prosecutors in Germany after the confiscation of assets.
Ruja Ignatova is best known as the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme called OneCoin, which The Times has described as “one of the biggest scams in history”.
When introducing OneCoin in 2016, Ignatova claimed it was the most potent digital currency in the world, overtaking top coins like Bitcoin. Ignatova’s flattering words made many people rush to invest in OneCoin.
The “Cryptoqueen” and her brainchild scammed millions between 2014 and 2016, stealing over $4 billion from victims. She disappeared shortly after the authorities started investigating the fraud and was last seen in Athens. There were some rumors that she underwent many plastic surgeries before running away.
In a lawsuit in 2021 in Dubai (UAE), Ignatova was accused of holding 230,000 Bitcoins given by Sheikh Saoud, a member of an Arab emirate.
In July 2022, the FBI listed Ignatova as “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives”. The agency offered a $100,000 reward for her information.
Sebastian Greenwood, Ignatova’s accomplice was arrested in July 2018 in Thailand and extradited to the US. In December 2022, Greenwood pleaded guilty to organized fraud and conspiracy to launder money. He will be sentenced in April, possibly up to 20 years in prison.