Many of the same tactics used in other financial crimes are used by crypto scammers, such as pump-and-dump schemes that lure investors into purchasing an asset with false claims about its value or outright attempts to steal digital assets. With the news of Cryptoqueen, more and more legal action is coming to hold every party involved liable. 

Who is Cryptoqueen?

Ruja Plamenova Ignatova is a convicted Bulgarian-German fraudster. She is best known as the creator of the OneCoin Ponzi scheme, which The New York Times called “one of the biggest scams in history.” She was the subject of the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen, which aired in 2019.

The 42-year-old Bulgarian-born woman is wanted for her alleged involvement in the OneCoin cryptocurrency scam. Files obtained by the BBC from Europol meetings indicate that the FBI-wanted fugitive was aware of efforts to apprehend her months before she vanished. Frank Schneider, a former spy and trusted adviser to Ms. Ignatova, provided the police documents to The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast.

Cryptoqueen disappeared on 25 October 2017 after being tipped off about intensifying police investigations into her OneCoin cryptocurrency. In June 2022, she was added to the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list.

She was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The first four counts are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, while the fifth counts are punishable by up to five years in prison.

What Happened to Cryptoqueen?

In October 2022, some of the first people in Europe to face criminal charges for their roles in a multibillion-dollar international fraud orchestrated by the founder of cryptocurrency OneCoin appeared in a German court.

Three people are accused of money laundering, fraud, and banking crime in one of the industry’s most infamous scams, including a Munich lawyer who worked for Cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova. The attorney allegedly transferred €20 million ($19.7 million) to the Cayman Islands for Ignatova to purchase two London apartments worth €75 million. At the time of writing, Ignatova is on the run, wanted by authorities in the United States and Europe.

A husband and wife are also charged with handling €320 million in OneCoin payments in a single year.

According to reports by Bitcoineer, Prosecutors said in a German court reading the indictment that OneCoin was a scam. Ignatova defrauded her customers by falsely claiming that OneCoin was a cryptocurrency whose value was determined by market mechanisms that they could observe. According to the indictment, they were told at one point that 50,000 new OneCoins were mined per minute.

“In reality, the ever-increasing value was a forgery, and the software merely simulated the mining process,” prosecutors testified in court.

Ignatova, the subject of the BBC podcast ‘The Missing Cryptoqueen,’ founded OneCoin in 2014 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and led the organization until her disappearance in October 2017.

Konstantin Ignatov, her brother, took over. He was arrested in the United States in 2019 and pleaded guilty. Ruja Ignatova is being investigated in Germany and has been charged with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering in the United States.

OneCoin claimed to have over 3 million members around the world. From the fourth quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2016, it generated €3.4 billion in revenue. It operated as a multilevel market network that paid commissions to members worldwide for recruiting others, and prosecutors told a US court this in 2019.

As mentioned, fraud and scams are nothing new to the cryptocurrency world. Despite efforts to use crypto to further crime, there is evidence of wallets moving, and like Cryptoqueen, it is impossible to stay undetected for cryptocurrency crimes. By holding scammers and fraudsters liable, cryptocurrency can stay a safe and secure digital currency that investors can hold. 

Byline: Hannah Parker