‘Cryptoqueen’ who scammed traders out of £3.3BILLION ‘is hiding in one in all South Africa’s most unique neighbourhoods’, investigators say
The search for the notorious fugitive ‘Cryptoqueen’ has now shifted to Cape Town, where German detectives are pursuing leads.
Ruja Ignatova is wanted for $5,000,000 by the FBI with investigators believing she was tipped off in 2017 after a U.S. District Court in New York issued a warrant for her arrest.
One step ahead, the scammer headed for Greece and disappeared – although her vanishing act has prompted some to wonder if she was bumped off by an organised crime group after she exhausted her usefulness as the face of the $4billion OneCoin scam.
Now German investigators say they believe she may have been hiding in one of South Africa’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, the Times reports.
In a new documentary about Ignatova, Sabine Dässel from the North Rhine-Westphalia state office of criminal investigation (LKA) said: ‘We are working with the hypothesis that Ruja Ignatova is still alive.’
The LKA is leading Germany‘s investigation into Ignatova and while Ms Dässel said investigators were not certain of her whereabouts that said solid clues pointed to Cape Town.
Although she remains on the run, her brother, Konstantin, was arrested in 2019 and plead guilty to multiple felonies for his leadership role in OneCoin.
Months before his arrest she was boarding a flight from Bulgaria to Athens as Konstantin extended stay in Cape Town, causing speculation that he was there receiving instructions from his sister.
A $5million reward has been offered in the hunt for the world’s most wanted woman, Ruja Ignatova, who scammed investors out of more than $4billion in ‘one of the largest global fraud schemes in history’
She was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after allegedly defrauding investors worldwide between 2014 and 2018 with her $4billion cryptocurrency pyramid scheme
His Instagram account still has pictures from that period of the city’s well-known sites.
Konstantin served three years in an American jail after telling FBI investigators that his sister had fled with £500million of investors’ money.
Since then, there have been reported sightings of Ignatova in a guarded neighbourhood outside Cape Town that under apartheid was exclusively for established white families but is increasingly drawing new Bulgarian money.
It comes as one of her fraud victims, who lost thousands, has urged other victims to come forward and join her fight for justice.
Hollywood producers are said to be circling, with Glaswegian Jen McAdam even hosting Kate Winslet for tea so the actress could hear more about her amazing resilience in the face of a devastating crypto deception.
‘I felt she would have done an immense job at detailing it all. She is beautiful, she is really beautiful, she came around for tea, high tea’, McAdam said of Winslet on Good Morning Britain earlier.
McAdam, who suffers from ME, revealed how an initial investment of £9,000 in worthless OneCoin with the inheritance from her father, spiralled as friends and family joined her, with the group eventually sinking £200,000 into the con.
Despite being on the run – or possibly dead – Ignatova is being pursued by McAdam, who is urging others to join her OneCoin victims lawsuit, after successfully obtaining a global asset freeze against Ignatova earlier this month.
Kate Winslet popped round for ‘high tea’ to learn about McAdam’s story
Jen McAdam told Good Morning Britain about her ordeal and inspiring decision to fight back
McAdam says the victims now have ‘more of a chance than they have ever had’ at clawing back any money, despite Ignatova’s absence, with the freezing order giving them ‘a chance of claiming what we’ve lost’.
Investors could sign up to buy the currency which would then appear in their account – and because more and more people would join, said Ignatova , the value of the currency would go up.
But in 2017, Jen, who at one point had believed her original stake was worth nearly £100,000, realised it was a scam.
Ignatova made the dash after setting up recording devices in her American boyfriend’s flat and learning that he was cooperating with the FBI, prosecutors said at the time.
At the beginning of the OneCoin story, early investors were attracted to Ignatova’s presentation as a glamorous Oxford-graduate who had allegedly spent six years with McKinsey before making the leap into the fledgling world of cryptocurrency.
She was confident, well-dressed and assured her supporters her project, OneCoin, was about to become the next big thing.
Within months, millions of people worldwide had bought into the vision, purchasing packages of a new currency online that they believed would one day change the world.
In these peak years, Ignatova was constantly in the spotlight, showing off her elegant outfits and glam lifestyle.
