In 2017 Ruja Ignatova – the self-proclaimed ‘Cryptoqueen’ – boarded a plane in Bulgaria bound for Athens. The fugitive, who is wanted by the FBI, hasn’t been seen since. Ignatova is on the bureau’s ‘Ten Most Wanted Fugitives’ list for “alleged leadership of a massive fraud scheme that affected millions of investors worldwide”. A co-founder of Bulgarian-based cryptocurrency company OneCoin Ltd, she is said to have defrauded investors out of more than $4 billion. It comes after her co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in Manhattan federal court last month. As well as Greenwood, Ignatova brought in her younger brother Konstantin Ignatov to help lead the “international pyramid scheme that involved the marketing of a fraudulent cryptocurrency”. The net began closing in when Konstantin was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport following an investigation by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney in 2019. Konstantin plead guilty to a range of charges including money laundering and fraud in 2019, according to the BBC. However, his older sister is still at large, with a federal warrant for Ignatova’s arrest issued on October 12, 2017. It was later superseded by a charge in February of 2018 with counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud.
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