OneCoin’s offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. Image: Belish
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To paraphrase Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz: if we had a nickel for every time a cryptocurrency turned out to be a Ponzi scheme ending with one of the ringleaders disappearing off the face of the earth, we’d have two nickels – which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Last time, it was Quadriga – if you have a spare few hours to lose down a rabbit hole on that one, have at it. Now, it’s Dr Ruja Ignatova, the so-called “missing Cryptoqueen,” now placed on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list for her alleged role in running the OneCoin cryptocurrency scam.
“She timed her scheme perfectly, capitalizing on the frenzied speculation of the early days of cryptocurrency,” reportedly said Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, describing OneCoin as “one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.”
Ignatova went missing back in 2017 after discovering that her American boyfriend was working with the FBI by bugging his apartment, according to Williams. Three years prior, she had allegedly started running OneCoin, supposedly a cryptocurrency where buyers could earn a “commission” if they sold the currency on to more people.
If that sounds suspiciously like a scam to you, that’s because it was: the FBI alleges that OneCoin was worthless, and never safeguarded by the blockchain technology that gives some level of safety to more traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It…
