My hunt for the crypto queen who stole $10bn is being turned into a film... and Kate Winslet’s starring as ME!
Extraordinary story of the Scots mother and her battle with a global fugitive
T‘She just got it, she understood the fight to get justice’
HE glamorous woman standing on stage appeared to shimmer under the hot lights. Wearing a sequin-studded red and black ball gown, long dark hair spilling over her shoulders, Dr Ruja Ignatova gripped the microphone as she addressed the crowd.
‘This network was created to fuel the growth of OneCoin, which I strongly believe will be the number one cryptocurrency worldwide,’ said the 36-year-old, to cheers from the crowd. ‘And the reason why I believe it is because I see all of you here. OneCoin is easy to use. OneCoin is for everyone. Make payments everywhere, everyone, globally. And this is who we are. Global citizens of a small world, wanting to make a change.’
Filmed in London in June 2016, Ignatova was issuing a rallying cry for the investors in her cryptocurrency, named OneCoin, which sounded like it could have been a motivational speech by a cult leader.
Perhaps it was. Now, that video sits on the FBI’s Most Wanted page where this week, Bulgarian-born Ignatova was listed as one of the agency’s ten most wanted fugitives. Having vanished in 2017 after allegedly defrauding tens of billions of dollars from investors all over the globe in what has now been labelled the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme, she is believed to have spent the past five years in hiding.
With a $100,000 price on her head, and the world’s biggest crime agency on her trail, the net may now be closing in on the once-feted businesswoman who boasts a PhD and studied at Oxford, although the origins of her scheme still remain murky. Some, including the US Department of Justice, believe that not only is OneCoin the largest financial scam ever perpetrated, but one ultimately orchestrated by Eastern European organised crime.
The FBI’s poster includes the sinister warning that she ‘is believed to travel with armed guards and/or associates’, and ‘may have had plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance.’
But while the FBI has finally made Ignatova the world’s most wanted woman, in Glasgow, a single mother has been relentlessly pursuing the so-called ‘Crypto queen’ for the past six years.
Jennifer McAdam, a 52-year-old businesswoman, invested a small inheritance from her beloved late father in OneCoin, persuading family and friends to do the same. When she realised – before most – the cryptocurrency was a sophisticated pyramid scheme, she started a victim-led campaign for justice that has seen her face intimidation and death threats and become the public voice for more than 10,000 victims.
Her story is so extraordinary that having written a book about the scandal, her life is now being made into a movie by MGM, with McAdam expected to be played by Oscar-winning A-lister Kate Winslet. Filmmaker Scott Z Burns, who is behind the project and wrote the screenplays for blockbusters The Bourne Ultimatum and Contagion, described McAdam as ‘a modernday Erin Brockovich.’
‘I cried when I heard that the FBI had placed her on the ten most wanted,’ McAdam says.
‘For so long, so many things felt bleak. I was stuck in this OneCoin hell for years. It felt as though I was screaming and nobody was hearing me. We were facing this continuous wall of silence. It all felt so hopeless. Hope is the only thing myself and the OneCoin victims have had to hold on to. And now, there is real hope for justice.’
McAdam was a single parent with her own IT company when she suffered two tragedies.
She was struck down by ME, leaving her bedbound and unable to work. Then, in 2015, her father, a former coalminer, died.
‘My dad was a hard worker, he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. He was a kind man. He always used to say to me, “Don’t you worry, when I go I’ll have a wee something for you.”
It might not have been a lot of money to some people but it was a lot of money to me. And it was my dad’s money.’
Unable to run her business due to illness, by early 2016 McAdam was, she says, in ‘financial dire straits’, and wanted to invest the money left by her father to create some financial security.
A friend suggested she look up Ignatova online, where she watched her give a speech to a European summit organised by The Economist. Smart, articulate, wearing one of her trademark ball gowns and enormous dangly earrings, Ignatova spoke with passion about how technology was changing business, and of the huge opportunities in the financial sector thanks to emerging cryptocurrencies – digital currencies that operate through a computeroperated exchange – such as OneCoin and Bitcoin.
‘I was blown away,’ says McAdam. ‘She was on the front cover of Forbes magazine, she had worked for McKinsey & Company and Eastern European bankers, and most importantly she was giving a speech in front of all these financial dignitaries.
‘I was a businesswoman myself. I thought, “Well done for a woman to do that. That’s amazing.”’
But while Ignatova did indeed have a decent financial pedigree, studied at Oxford and worked at McKinsey, she had also been convicted of fraud in Germany in
2012, after she and her father acquired a factory that later went bankrupt in dubious circumstances. The Forbes magazine cover meanwhile, turned out to have been faked.
Crucially, Ignatova’s OneCoin did not use a blockchain, the only technical system that can support a true cryptocurrency. Without it, OneCoin was little more than a pyramid scheme. But none of this information was freely available. Instead, OneCoin was staging glamorous events, producing glossy literature claiming it would overtake Bitcoin as the world’s number one cryptocurrency, seducing thousands into investing. Having watched Ignatova’s speech, looked at her credentials and done her research McAdam opted to invest.
‘It ticked all the boxes for me,’ she says. ‘The value was continuingly going up, and as Ruja said the value was based on supply and demand, that made sense.’
Not only did McAdam invest around £9,000, she encouraged friends and family to invest too. They did, plunging a total of £220,000 into OneCoin.
They weren’t alone. It’s now estimated Britons invested more than £27million in OneCoin in the first six months of 2016 alone. The total ploughed into the scheme from the UK now tops £100million. Worldwide, it is believed to be more than £14billion.
McAdam initially saw the value of OneCoin soar, and within weeks was told her investment was worth more than £40,000. But there was continual pressure to invest more.
‘When you invest you’re put into online groups and that’s where the cult-like aspect came in,’ she says.
‘You’re told £500 or £1,000 isn’t enough to change your financial situation, but with £5,000 and above you could change not only your own situation, but that of your family for generations to come. People remortgaged their homes. They took out loans. It was horrendous what people were doing so they could invest even more money into OneCoin.’
A few months later, McAdam was contacted online by a stranger – Tim Curry, an American blockchain professional – who informed her OneCoin was a scam.
Unwilling to believe him she blocked him, but in the following weeks, poring over the information he had given her, she started asking OneCoin members questions.
‘I hadn’t thought to ask before how does a blockchain work, what are digital wallets and exchanges. Eventually a OneCoin leader left a voice note for me which I’ll never forget. He said that the OneCoin blockchain was a SQL server. And at that point I knew it was a fraud. Because if there’s no blockchain, there’s no cryptocurrency.’
McAdam contacted Curry, who gave her details for City of London police, who had opened an investigation into OneCoin. They advised her not to invest any more money, and to advise others to do the same. Getting her money back proved impossible. There was no telephone number for OneCoin, just an email address that did not respond to queries. Her investment had vanished.
Instead, McAdam started a Facebook support group to spread the word among her own contacts. Before long, it had mushroomed.
‘All of a sudden, people I didn’t know, investors from around the world, were asking to join. Today we have over 10,000 victims in the support groups.
‘I’ve started separate groups for Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, North America, South America, Pakistan, India. They just kept coming. They still do.’
As the fraud emerged, Ignatova vanished, after boarding a plane from Bulgaria to Greece in October 2017, supposedly to fly to yet another OneCoin conference. She has not been seen since.
Rumours say she may be on a yacht, sailing in international waters to evade capture, in Greece, Germany or Bulgaria. She is thought to have had extensive plastic surgery. Some investigators believe she never expected OneCoin to grow so big and may have tried to close it down in the summer of 2017 only to find herself stymied by other, shadowy figures. ‘She can hide very well and I do believe she’s had plenty of plastic surgery,’ McAdam says.
Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov, who briefly ran OneCoin after his sister disappeared, was arrested in the US in 2019. He agreed a plea deal with the FBI and later testified against Mark Scott, a lawyer, who was convicted of conspiracy to launder money and commit bank fraud. He laundered £300million for the scammers and was paid £38million. Ignatov is due to be sentenced for his role in the scam later this year.
‘Once you go down the rabbit hole that is OneCoin you don’t come back the same person,’ McAdam says. ‘It’s terrifying, it’s mind-blowing, it’s shocking. And it’s relentless.’
McAdam has received multiple ‘horrendous’ violent threats over the years, many of which have been reported to Police Scotland.
Meanwhile, OneCoin hired a London law firm to try to intimidate her into staying silent.
‘What they didn’t realise is that they had already taken everything I had, so I had nothing left to lose,’ she says.
She is also frustrated that the City of London Police closed their investigation in 2019, saying they could find no evidence or assets in the UK, and praises the FBI for taking what she sees as a far more proactive approach.
Her book, Devil’s Coin, will be published next year in both the UK and the US, while the film, with the working title Fake!, is in development.
McAdam, who will work on the movie as an executive producer, is delighted that Winslet has been slated to play her.
‘I’ve met Kate,’ she says. ‘She came to visit and is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.
‘She brought support, understanding and empathy. She just got it, she understood the fight to get justice.’
Today, as she continues to give a voice to OneCoin victims and watches carefully as the FBI pursues Ignatova, McAdam says she is still plagued with guilt over investing her late father’s money, and encouraging so many others to do the same.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever have peace from the regret and the guilt, and the emotional tie I had to my own dad’s money,’ she says, her voice breaking.
‘He was a loveable, hardworking man and I gave his money to her. That will always be with me.
‘But in a way, it gives me strength. I’ve made a promise to get justice, for me, for my friends and family, and the OneCoin victims. I won’t stop until I get his money back.’