BBC News stories that the FBI has elevated the bounty on lacking CryptoQueen Dr. Ruja Ignatova to $5 million. Bulgaria-born German nationwide Ignatova went lacking in 2017 after a federal warrant was issued for her arrest. She is accused of wire fraud, cash laundering, and associated offenses whereas working a Ponzi scheme dubbed OneCoin and defrauding over $4 billion from victims.
OneCoin wasn’t even a cryptocurrency, in keeping with crypto investor websites like CoinDesk. As a substitute, it was a Ponzi scheme driving the coattails of investor enthusiasm in the course of the peak of the crypto craze. There was no blockchain expertise behind OneCoin, with its internally managed and opaque performance. Like several Ponzi scheme, present buyers have been incentivized to usher in recent blood, garnering billions in capital earlier than the fraud was unmasked.
After Ignatova first went lacking in 2017, the FBI issued her arrest warrant and put up a reward of $100,000. In 2022, the CryptoQueen made it to the FBI’s ten most wanted list, and the bounty went as much as $250,000. As per our headline, useful sleuths can now dream of a fats $5 million test as Ignatova’s case has certified for the US State Division’s Transnational Organized Crime Reward Program.
Dr. Ignatova, the CryptoQueen, has change into the one girl within the FBI’s prime 10 most wished listing. Going by the dimensions of the bounty, her notoriety now ranks alongside fugitives akin to drug cartel kingpins from Europe and Russia and even the pinnacle of the worldwide MS-13 felony gang.
The Lacking CryptoQueen additionally has gangland connections. She doesn’t sound like a typical tech geek, along with her suspected hyperlinks to the Bulgarian underworld—the nation the place OneCoin originated and operated.
A BBC podcast hosted by Jamie Bartlett resurfaced the Lacking CryptoQueen story simply forward of the bounty being elevated twenty-fold. Bartlett appears to assume the big bounty hike is a good suggestion. “$100,000 wouldn’t persuade a junior member of against the law syndicate or a private bodyguard to name the FBI’s hotline – it’s far too dangerous. However $5m simply would possibly.” Stated the podcaster. “We’ll in all probability know inside a number of weeks if it’s labored.”
Nonetheless, there’s a dreadful reality anybody within the $5 million should face. Ignatova could also be useless, so any reward searching for her “arrest and/or conviction” won’t be legitimate. There are rumors that the CryptoQueen isn’t simply useless by pure causes or an accident, however she was murdered by the suspected Bulgarian mafia boss concerned in her disappearance. Novice sleuths, please watch out on the market.
