Vow to arrest the founder of OneCoin! U.S. raises reward to $5 million

In an update to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List", the U.S. Department of State's Transnational Organized Crime Reward Program showed that the authorities are willing to increase the reward to $5 million for information related to "OneCoin" "The whereabouts of founder Ruja Ignatova, as well as all information that could convict her.

Ruja Ignatova, known as the "Crypto queen", has suddenly disappeared from public view since 2017, leaving global investors in the dark about the whereabouts of her funds. According to sources, the OneCoin founder’s last confirmed haunt was in Athens in October 2017.

OneCoin was promoted as a revolutionary digital currency promising huge profits, but was later revealed to be a Ponzi scheme that relied on new investments to repay existing investors. The scheme attracted millions of investors with the promise of high returns, but collapsed when Ruja Ignatova disappeared.

U.S. authorities charged Ruja Ignatova with fraud and money laundering in 2017 and issued a federal arrest warrant for her. In June 2022, Ruja Ignatova was added to the top ten most wanted fugitive list with a reward of $100,000, and later in 2023. The reward was increased to $250,000, but as of this article's publication, Ruja Ignatova remains at large. The FBI report said she held a German passport and "may have undergone plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance." The FBI's increased reward underscores the determination to bring Ruja Ignatova to justice.

OneCoin was founded in 2014 and was exposed as a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme in 2015, defrauding investors of approximately US$4 billion. Several people have been criminally prosecuted in the United States for their role in the scheme, including Ruja Ignatova's boyfriend Gilbert Armenta, attorney Mark Scott, former legal and compliance chief Irina Dilkinska, and co-founders Karl Sebastian Greenwood and William Morro.

Ruja Ignatova’s brother Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges related to his participation in the OneCoin scheme in 2019, was sentenced to 34 months in prison, and was released in March 2024. Karl Greenwood, the co-founder of “OneCoin”, has been detained since being extradited from Thailand to the United States in 2018. In December 2022, he signed a confession and admitted to wire fraud and money laundering charges; in 2023 In September 2016, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a lower Manhattan court and ordered to recover US$300 million in illegal gains.

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