of the $4 billion, but her exact whereabouts today are still unknown
Bulgarian entrepreneur Ruja Ignatova has been the center of a global controversy for the past decade. In 2012, Ignatova and her father were arrested for running a fraudulent scheme. Following their release from prison, Ignatova founded BigCoin, a multi-level marketing scam, in 2013. Two years later, she established OneCoin, a Ponzi scheme.
OneCoin was a classic example of a Ponzi scheme, with old investors paid out with the money of new investors. To give the illusion of a legitimate cryptocurrency, Ignatova and her team pretended there was a blockchain running behind OneCoin when in fact there was none. Transactions were simulated in a sham database and miners were claimed to be validating the transactions when they were not.
Starting in 2015, suspicions began to grow about Ignatova and OneCoin, leading to investigations and arrests in multiple countries. In October 2017, Ignatova disappeared after being tipped off about her impending arrest. She left her brother, Konstantin, in charge and he was arrested in 2019, facing a potential sentence of ninety years. China alone saw 98 people arrested and prosecuted, resulting in the recovery of over a quarter billion dollars.
In the end, OneCoin is believed to have taken over $4 billion from investors across the world. The Times reported it to be “one of the biggest scams in history”. Estimates of the money Ignatova herself pocketed vary from half a billion to the majority of the $4 billion, though her current whereabouts remain unknown.