My hunt for the mesmerising party queen on the run after a fraud worth £3.5 BILLION
To investors in her new cryptocurrency she was a guru who’d make them rich. Then she vanished into thin air . . .
has taken on global proportions. Because OneCoin was sold through network marketing, people like Jen brought in friends and family.
Farmers in Uganda invested a small fortune hoping it would transform their lives. A disproportionate number of British Muslims are among the victims. Forbidden by sharia law from many standard forms of financial investments – because of the prohibition on earning interest – OneCoin seemed ideal and it seems they were targeted.
SO HOW was Dr Ruja able to convince people across the globe to invest in a such a scam? Eileen Barker, professor emeritus of sociology at the London School of Economics, believes the OneCoin organisation had similarities to messianic movements or cults in which people are led to believe they are part of something so big it is going to change the world.
The regulators, moreover, were feeble. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority issued a warning about OneCoin in September 2016, but removed it in August 2017 with little explanation. The FCA now faces serious questions. OneCoin promoters took this as evidence nothing was wrong and carried on recruiting. Shockingly, people are still selling OneCoin in Britain today and still sharing that Forbes ‘cover’ picture on social media. (It was, in fact, nothing more than a paid advertisement in a Bulgarian edition of the magazine.)
Private emails released in a bundle of US court documents suggest Dr Ruja had an exit strategy planned soon after the company was set up: ‘Take the money and run, and blame someone else…’ she wrote.
But the documents suggest that at other moments she acknowledged the gravity of her actions, writing to one colleague: ‘The damage is done. I have to somehow live with it. But it is something that really upsets me.’ Not that this will be much comfort for the victims she has left behind.
IN MARCH this year, Dr Ruja’s younger brother Konstantin Ignatov, who took over OneCoin when Ruja vanished, was arrested by the FBI as he boarded a plane from Los Angeles to Turkey. He was charged with fraud, and Dr Ruja was charged in absentia with wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money-laundering.
Today, Dr Ruja is wanted by the FBI. One of New York’s top prosecutors, the District Attorney for Manhattan, has described OneCoin as ‘ a pyramid scheme based on smoke and mirrors’. And like all pyramid schemes, it’s only the people at the top who get very rich.
While most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, are perfectly legitimate enterprises, Dr Ruja found she could exploit the hype surrounding new technology, the lack of effective regulation – and plain, old-fashioned ignorance.
The FCA says British citizens have lost millions in crypto scams, mostly in speculative new projects they didn’t understand.
AS THE sheer scale of the fraud became apparent, I set out to find Dr Ruja, starting at her £2 million mansion in Bulgaria’s seaside resort of Sozopol. Her impressive yacht was moored in a nearby harbour, but the staff said they hadn’t seen her since 2017. I found parts of her multi-million-pound property empire in Sofia: the city’s most famous restaurant – now boarded up – and an imposing building overlooking Bulgaria’s parliament. But of Dr Ruja herself, I found nothing.
And what about the missing fortune? The Mail on Sunday understands that a proportion of the £ 3.5 billion she accumulated is managed by a UK family wealth office in London, but so far our questions have gone unanswered.
Meanwhile, a US lawyer is currently on trial in New York accused of laundering OneCoin proceeds.
I was startled to find the OneCoin headquarters operating as normal in Sofia. OneCoin insists the US authorities are wrong, that it is a legitimate cryptocurrency and that everything will come good in the end. The company was unable to help me find its founder.
Some people who have had their fingers burned by OneCoin are beginning to talk. Various sources say Dr Ruja has sought refuge in Dubai, Russia, Brazil and even London. There are rumours that she might be getting help from higher powers – organised crime, perhaps, or even the Kremlin.
Some say she is living on a yacht and travelling around the Mediterranean with a fake passport and that her appearance has been altered with cosmetic surgery. Others are convinced she is dead.
Then, two weeks ago, I got another lead. Could she be in Germany, where Dr Ruja’s family emigrated when she was ten years old?
Hours of research on the internet, cross-referencing the movements of her friends and associates, suggested that the most likely hiding place is Frankfurt.
It might seem a gamble to hide from the FBI in Germany’s financial capital, but Dr Ruja is a woman used to taking risks. And with access to so much money, she could have multiple identities, addresses and a regularly changing appearance – as disturbingly intangible as the so- called currency through which she has stolen billions from ordinary, hard-working people.
Jamie Bartlett’s eight-part podcast, The Missing Cryptoqueen, is available on BBC Sounds.