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História e cronologias

OneCoin and Ruja Ignatova: the fraud behind the cryptocurrency story

Meet Crypto Queen Ruja Ignatova, a wanted fugitive in one of the biggest financial scams in history, who is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation Top 10 Most Wanted list. 🚨

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Original publication · 5 Mar 2026. Figures, claims and opinions reflect the original publication date.

As publicações originais estão em inglês. A navegação está disponível em sete idiomas.

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Meet Crypto Queen Ruja Ignatova, a wanted fugitive in one of the biggest financial scams in history, who is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation Top 10 Most Wanted list. 🚨

She is the founder of #OneCoin, one of the largest financial scams in modern history.

Between 2014 and 2017, Ignatova convinced millions of people around the world to invest in what she claimed would become the next Bitcoin.

She appeared on massive stages, spoke to packed arenas, and presented herself as a brilliant financial visionary.

But there was one major problem.

OneCoin was not a real cryptocurrency.

There was no blockchain, no public ledger, no real mining.

Instead, the system operated as a massive Ponzi scheme.

Investors bought expensive “education packages” that supposedly contained tokens to mine OneCoin.

In reality, the coins were simply numbers generated inside a private database controlled by the company.

The price of OneCoin was also fake. It was manually increased by the company to create the illusion of growth and success.

During its peak, the scheme spread across more than 175 countries and attracted millions of victims.

Authorities estimate that investors lost over 4 billion dollars.

Ignatova built a glamorous public image while the money flowed in.

She travelled in private jets, wore luxury designer dresses, and hosted huge promotional events where she promised financial revolution and massive profits.

Then in October 2017, just as international investigations were closing in, she disappeared.

Ignatova boarded a flight from Sofia to Athens.
After that, she vanished without a trace.

Since then, she has never been publicly seen again.

Today, she remains one of the most famous fugitives in the world.

The FBI placed her on its Top 10 Most Wanted list and offers a reward of up to 5 million dollars for information leading to her arrest.

Several of her associates have already been arrested and sentenced, including Karl Sebastian Greenwood, who received a 20 year prison sentence for his role in the scheme.

The OneCoin scandal became a defining warning for the crypto industry.

It showed how easily technical buzzwords, staged marketing events, and social engineering can be used to convince millions of people to invest or believe in something that never existed.

And yet, scams and lies like this are still happening.

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