Missing Cryptoqueen of OneCoin Making Headlines Again

Ruja Ignatova, the missing Bulgarian Ponzi-schemer who left the crypto space with a dented reputation and a 7.2 billion dollar hole, is making headlines again, this time in the UK where a popular podcast about her endeavor known as OneCoin has revealed further scandal for London’s City district.

This week, the global OneCoin story landed in Australia, where a horse racing official was accused of laundering money through the scheme. In the past years, the misdemeanors of Dr. Ruja Ignatova have touched on every continent, but none more than in Europe.

BBC Sounds

Dr Ruja, the Bulgarian CEO of OneCoin who went missing at the end of 2017, is the feature protagonist in the BBC Sounds podcast series called the “Missing Cryptoqueen”.

This is a great podcast series. After the last of the 8 podcast of “The Missing Cryptoqueen” was broadcast more revelations came to light. So they have now added a 9th episode.
Intriguing stuff. Including an ex spyhttps://t.co/B1fOF200Bc

— Roy Proud (@proud_r) August 28, 2020

As she was educated at Oxford and scammed a lot of British people out of their life savings with her multilevel marketing scam called OneCoin, the show is quite a popular listen.

Multilevel marketing refers to a scam setup where the people at the top sell licenses to people below them in the hierarchy, who then sell on to people below them. The only ones to make any real money are of course the people at the top.

Now the latest episode, entitled “Follow the money“, made for quite the scandal after it was revealed that several leading figures of London’s City district could have stopped the whole thing sooner, if someone would have just done their job a bit stricter sort of speak.

FCA

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA in short, is a powerful controlling authority in London which, just as the SEC in Wall Street, regulates whatever is going on in finance. As London was known (at least until the Brexit vote) as the financial capital of Europe, the FCA is seen as a powerful and important organization.

Given that many British families had invested their life savings into the Ponzi scheme known as OneCoin, the so-called “Bitcoin killer”, the revelation of earlier this month by the BBC podcast that the FCA posted a warning about OneCoin in 2016 already but later removed it, should have therefore made for a news story that the Bulgarian crypto queen was not to be trusted.

https://t.co/neiqUlbCqh

Oh where oh where is the Cryptoqueen, / she took in billions then fled the scene; / though so charmingly bold / her M.O. was quite old: / OneCoin was just a pyramid scheme.

— Mark Backman (@wryghost) August 27, 2020

Three months after the Bulgarian Doctor spoke in front of a packed Wembley stadium about how her crypto coin OneCoin would easily surpass Bitcoin, the FCA stated on it’s website: “Beware trading virtual currencies with OneCoin”.

This firm is not authorised by us and we do not believe it is undertaking any activities that require our authorisation. However, we are concerned about the potential risks this firm poses to UK consumers.

ICO madness

Problem is that by next summer, the warning disappeared, just as people got into the frenzy of the crypto bull run known by now as the ICO madness of autumn of 2017. Bitcoin rose to $20,000 and Ethereum touched $1,000. Crypto madness was in full swing.

By 1 August 2017 to be precise, the FCA removed it’s warning after a London law firm had sent them threatening letters, and of course many Brits invested even more into the Ponzi scheme.

As Dr. Ruja mysteriously disappeared in October of 2017 and took the billions of dollars that were poured into the Ponzi Scheme with her, many in the UK are now left with a need to find a culprit.

It is clear that the revelation by the Missing Cryptoqueen podcast has directed some of these voices to write angry letters to the FCA as a result. The organization has therefore replied that any future “queries should be directed to the City of London Police on this“.