“In this Bulgarian name, the patronymic is Plamenova and the family name is Ignatova.”
Ruja Plamenova Ignatova (Bulgarian: Ружа Пламенова Игнатова, romanized: Ruža Plamenova Ignatova, occasionally transliterated as “Ruga Ignatova”; born 30 May 1980) is a Bulgarian-born German entrepreneur who in 2019 was convicted of fraud. She is best known as the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin, which The Times has described as “one of the biggest scams in history”. She is the subject of the 2019 BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and the 2022 book of the same name.
Since 2017, Ignatova has been on the run from various international law enforcement agencies. In early 2019, she was charged in absentia by U.S. authorities for wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. She was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted in June 2022. Ignatova is the subject of an international Interpol warrant by German authorities. Ignatova owns a number of properties in Dubai.
Reporting in 2023 and 2024 has suggested that Ignatova may have been murdered in 2018 on the orders of Bulgarian organised crime figure “Taki” Hristoforos Nikos Amanatidis, who is suspected of initially sheltering her.
Early life and education
Ignatova was born in Ruse, Bulgaria in 1980 to a Romani family. Ignatova emigrated to Germany with her family when she was ten years old, and spent part of her childhood in Schramberg in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Claims that she may have studied at University of Oxford in England give no details of college, course, or date of matriculation. In 2005, she earned a PhD in private international law from the University of Konstanz in Germany with the dissertation Art. 5 Nr. 1 EuGVO – Chancen und Perspektiven der Reform des Gerichtsstands am Erfüllungsort, which discusses lex causae in conflict of laws. She reportedly has also worked for McKinsey & Company.
| Ruja Ignatova | |
|---|---|
FBI picture
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| FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive | |
| Reward | $250,000 |
| Description | |
| Born | Ruzha Plamenova Ignatova 30 May 1980 Ruse, Bulgaria |
| Nationality |
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| Status | |
| Penalty | Up to 90 years for the Ponzi scheme. 16 months’ suspended imprisonment for a previous case. |
| Added | 30 June 2022 |
| Number | 527 |
| Currently a Top Ten Fugitive | |
Criminal activities
In 2012, she was convicted of fraud in Germany in connection with her father Plamen Ignatov’s acquisition of a company that shortly afterwards was declared bankrupt in dubious circumstances; she was given a suspended sentence of 14 months’ imprisonment. In 2013, she was involved with a multi-level marketing scam called BigCoin. In 2014, she founded a pyramid scheme called OneCoin.
Investigation and disappearance
On 25 October 2017, Ignatova disappeared after being tipped off about increasing police investigations about OneCoin. In 2019, her brother Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering in connection with the scheme.
In 2022, prosecutors in Darmstadt, Germany confirmed an investigation of “a lawyer from Neu-Isenburg” for possible money laundering: the transfer of 7.69 million euros by Ignatova into one of her private accounts in 2016. In January 2022, police searched apartments and offices in Weilburg, Baden-Baden, Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg, Neu-Isenburg and Vaihingen.
Afterwards, the North Rhine-Westphalia Police and German Federal Criminal Police Office announced that Ignatova is sought for fraud charges. The Federal Criminal Police Office announced a €5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. An Interpol Red Notice followed. This listing was reciprocated by Europol adding Ignatova to its ‘most wanted’ list; however, Deutsche Welle notes that the Europol listing was removed under unknown circumstances.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation added Ignatova to its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and announced at a joint press conference with IRS Criminal Investigation and United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of New York. The FBI followed up with an episode of its podcast and YouTube series Inside the FBI devoted to Ignatova and the OneCoin case. As of May 2022 there was a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to her arrest.
While a 2022 interview with FBI Special Agent Paul Roberts noted that the agency’s investigation into Ignatova was “operating under the assumption that she is still alive” and that the agency had “no information” to counter that belief, Bulgarian investigative reporting site Bureau of Investigative Reporting and Data – BIRD published a 2023 report on Bulgarian police documents in which a police informant had overheard Georgi Vasilev, the brother-in-law of the Bulgarian drug lord “Taki” Hristoforos Amanatidis, saying (In an intoxicated state) that Ignatova was murdered in November 2018 on Taki’s orders. The alleged murderer, Hristo Hristov, who is also Bulgarian, is serving a sentence in a Dutch prison for drug trafficking. According to the report, Ignatova was murdered aboard a yacht in the Ionian Sea, and her body was dismembered and thrown overboard. The alleged motive for the murder was to conceal Taki’s involvement in the OneCoin scam. Taki is said to reside in Dubai as of February 2023, having evaded Bulgarian authorities.
Ignatova was the subject of a book, The Missing Cryptoqueen, in 2022.
Personal life
Ignatova was married to the German lawyer Björn Strehl, with whom she had a daughter in 2016.
