The OneCoin scam, orchestrated by Ruja Ignatova, was a colossal multi-billion dollar fraud that combined elements of a Ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme, and cryptocurrency scam, defrauding millions of investors worldwide.
Mind Map
クリックして展開
クリックしてインタラクティブなマインドマップを確認
Notorious cryptocurrency
scammer Dr. Bruha Ignativa made billions
of pounds selling a fake cryptocurrency
called OneCoin. This is the only woman
on the FBI's most wanted list, and she
is responsible for one of the biggest
scams in history.
She led millions of believers in her
cult-like company to trust her with
their life
savings before abandoning them and
escaping with
billions. It was basically a get-richqu
scheme, a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid
scheme, and a crypto scam all combined
into one colossal multi-billion dollar
fraud. But how did she do it? And where
is she now?
Even years later, this is a story
shrouded in mystery as her whereabouts
are still
unknown, and there's a $5 million reward
if you can find
her. One theory says she lives in Dubai
with a new name and a new face. Another
claims her body sits dismembered at the
bottom of the Mediterranean.
But either way, evidence suggests she
might be one of the wealthiest criminals
ever. This is a story filled with
gangster hit squads, mafia,
mafia,
espionage, and corrupt Saudi royals.
It's a story with betrayal, apartments
filled to the ceiling with cash, and a
billiondoll empire built on lies and manipulation.
manipulation.
This is the sinister true story of
OneCoin and the search for the evil
crypto. Roua Ignatova was born in a poor
Bulgarian city in 1980. But at the age
of 10, her family fled to Germany in the
hope of a better life. Growing up, Roua
was very bright. But that led to her
feeling like she was better than
everyone else around her. She became
increasingly obsessed with the idea of
getting rich and vowed to become a
millionaire before she was 30.
After finishing school, Roua got a
scholarship to a German university, then
a PhD in law, followed by a degree from Oxford
Oxford
University. With her impressive
qualifications, she landed several
prestigious jobs. First at the Bulgarian
branch of McKenzie, a top consulting
firm, and then at Bulgaria's largest
investment company. There she became
extremely wellconed as sheworked with
important business people, politicians, and
and
celebrities. But it still wasn't enough
for her. She was now 31 and still not a
millionaire. And dealing with wealthy
clients and international banks all day
only made her more desperate to build
her own fortune.
So in 2013, she started to seriously
research Bitcoin, a new idea in finance
that had started to get people's
attention. At the time, Bitcoin was only
a few years old, but its price had
recently been shooting
up. Because of Roua's financial
background, as well as her extensive
network, she was in great demand to
speak about cryptocurrency at seminars
and events around Europe. And at one
seminar in November of 2013, a man
called Sebastian Greenwood watched her
speak and how well she captured the
crowd during her crypto
talk. After she left the stage,
Sebastian pushed his way over to her and
asked a question that would change her life
life
forever. Have you ever considered
With multi-level marketing companies
known as MLMs, you typically buy their
product through a seller directly, not
from a store or website. That seller
isn't an employee of the company earning
a salary, but instead they earn a
commission on every sale they make. This
allows MLM companies to get an army of
individual sellers working on their
behalf. But that's just one way you can
make money. You can also recruit other
people to sell and you'll earn
commissions on any sales they make. And
when those people recruit more people,
you earn commissions from them as well,
which starts to look a lot like a
pyramid. If you get in early, you can
make a lot of money. But most people who
join MLMs
don't. However, at the crypto conference
where Roua had been giving a speech, she
got chatting with Sebastian about their
shared interests, especially about how
they both wanted to get
rich. Sebastian had already made money
from running an MLM before, but he felt
the hype around this new crypto
technology presented a huge opportunity.
What if they teamed up to create their
own crypto project, but used multi-level
marketing to sell
it? There were plenty of MLMs and plenty
of new crypto projects, but combining
the two together could be powerful. If
they had a network of sellers working on
commission, it would help drive up the
price of the coin, and then the price of
the coin would help bring more people
into the network, creating a powerful
growth cycle.
Sebastian's MLM expertise meant he could
handle sales, whilst Rouger's banking
experience and polished look made her
the ideal face of the company. They
would call it
OneCoin. They came up with a plan to
target a whole new audience. People who
weren't techsavvy, who didn't understand
how crypto worked, but understood MLM
and wanted to get
rich. However, there was one major
obstacle in their way.
Neither Roua or Sebastian actually knew
how to create the blockchain they
needed. But then they realized this
could be an
advantage. By not actually having a
blockchain and instead just telling
people they did, it would mean they
could set the price of their coin to
whatever they
wanted. Rouger would simply keep a
record of how many onecoins someone
bought on an SQL database, basically a
glorified Excel spreadsheet.
With their plan in place, Roua and
Sebastian officially registered the
company in Jibralta and Dubai. And Roua
also opened a physical office in her
home city in
Bulgaria. They proudly announced that
OneCoin would be the Bitcoin killer. But
unlike Bitcoin, which had a fixed supply
of 21 million, OneCoin would have 2.1
billion coins.
However, the difference between legal
multi-level marketing and an illegal
pyramid scheme is whether the company
has an actual product or not. For
example, Herbal Life uses multi-level
marketing, but since they have a real
tangible product, it's
legal. But in 2014, when OneCoin was
starting, cryptocurrency regulation was
practically non-existent. And so Roua
and Sebastian weren't sure that OneCoin
would classify as a real product. They
definitely didn't want to risk attention
from regulators. And so they found a
loophole. Instead of people directly
buying OneCoin, customers would buy
education packages. These contained a
basic PDF file with information about
finance and investing. The material by
itself was pretty poor quality, often
had spelling mistakes, and much of it was
was
plagiarized. But that didn't matter
because customers were buying these
education packages for an entirely
different reason. With each package, you
also received free tokens which could be
exchanged for one
coin. Depending on which package someone
bought, they got a different number of
OneCoin tokens as a free bonus. The more
expensive package you bought, the more
tokens you
got. This way, OneCoin was officially
selling a product, these education
packages, even though everyone was
really buying them for the OneCoin
tokens. So, now that they had their
product, Roua and Sebastian began
persuading MLM sellers to come sell for
OneCoin, and they offered a generous
commission plan.
If you sold someone a OneCoin package,
you got a 10% sales commission. But if
anyone you refer also makes a sale, you
got 10% commission on all their sales,
too. For example, you sell your friend a
onecoin package worth
€5,000. You get
€500. But then later, your friend sells
someone else a one coin package worth €5,000.
€5,000.
Not only does your friend get €500
commission, but since you recruited
them, you get €500 from that sale as
well, and this can continue indefinitely
as people refer
others. 60% of commissions would be paid
out in real money, and the remaining 40%
would be paid out in one coin. It was
simple, but
lucrative. But finally, there was the
extra twist that set OneCoin apart from
every other MLM. You could not only make
money from selling onecoin and
recruiting others, but also from OneCoin
increasing in value over
time. Rucha promised that at some point
soon, OneCoin would be listed on a
crypto exchange platform, so it could be
traded at any time for real money. And
this is where things started to get crazy.
crazy. [Music]
The pitch for buying OneCoin was simple
but powerful. Roua said she had taken
all of Bitcoin's problems and fix them.
Rouger said Onecoin was the people's
coin. She said Bitcoin was too
complicated as people needed their own
wallets and private keys. Whereas
OneCoin was simple as you just signed up
to their website. She said Bitcoin was
about speculation and it was slow and
inefficient as a currency whereas
OneCocoin was focused on everyday use.
She said Bitcoin was anonymous and used
by criminals whereas OneCoin was
centralized and monitored so it was safe
from crime. And finally, Bitcoin's
founder was unknown and had disappeared.
Whereas the founder of Onecoin had a
degree from Oxford and was seemingly a
very trustworthy and competent
businesswoman. Roua frequently talked
about her time working for McKenzie,
consulting for Fortune 500 companies,
and working with Wall Street
banks. So, Roua had everything she
needed to make Onecoin seem instantly
trustworthy. Roua then began speaking at
live events and hosting webinars. She
taught the world doing radio shows,
interviews, and anything she could to
sell people on how Onecoin would change the
the
world. And she always emphasized her
PhD, referring to herself only as Dr.
Rouger. She essentially created a new
public persona. Whereas Roua's fashion
sense used to be understated, Dr. Rouger
wore bright red lipstick and
eye-catching designer dresses. And in
videos, she prominently displayed her
degrees on the wall behind her and spoke
about having lots of
money. Now, at this point, one news
story was going viral about a man who
spent $27 on Bitcoin in 2009. And now
that the price had shot up, his crypto
made him a millionaire. And there were
countless more stories of ordinary
people getting in early on Bitcoin and
making life-changing money. So, Rouger
exploited this fear of missing out as
nobody wanted to miss out on the next big
big
crypto. Onecoin felt like people's
chance and Roua assured everyone would
eventually be even bigger than
Bitcoin. Meanwhile, Sebastian recruited
more of his connections from the MLM
world who were top sellers. Using their
networks and OneCoin's lucrative
promises, the scam was fully underway.
A lot of sales came from parties,
lunches, and DMs on Facebook. Many
people got introduced to OneCoin from
someone they knew with a simple message.
Do you know about Bitcoin? Well, I heard
about a new cryptocurrency that's going
to be even
bigger. Little did these people know,
they were getting their friends and
family to invest in a giant
scam. But OneCoin's biggest sales
channel of all was public live events.
They always reminded the audience how
they'd missed out on Bitcoin and that
this was a once- ina-lifetime
opportunity to get in early on a new and
better crypto
project. Through a combination of
misplaced trust, greed, playing on
people's emotions, and fear of missing
out, Roua and Sebastian got people from
all over the world to start buying
OneCoin packages. And of course, those
people who bought in then told other
people. And so word began to spread and
momentum began to
build. The combination of emotional
manipulation techniques to get crowds
excited and the perceived authority and
credibility of Dr. Rouger was
convincing. Rouger even won Bulgaria's
businesswoman of the year award which
only accelerated OneCoin's growth. The
fact that the entire crypto space was
booming at the time also
helped. But another tactic OneCoin used
to convince investors everything was
legitimate was that they distributed
copies of Forbes magazine with Dr.
Rouger on the cover. How could this be a
scam if Rouger was in Forbes
magazine? What they didn't realize is
that she'd simply paid for an ad in
Forbes which appeared a few pages into
the magazine and she then tore off the
first few pages to make people think she
was the cover star.
And since it was in the Bulgarian
version of Forbes, they couldn't read
the disclaimer that said it was a paid
ad. Just like everything else about
OneCoin, it was a
lie. The reality was OneCoin was a
get-richqu scheme from the start, but it
was now multiple different frauds
allinone. Firstly, it was a Ponzi scheme
as the only reason they were able to pay
out referral commissions to early
investors was by using the money from
new investors. Secondly, since OneCoin
was nothing but a spreadsheet with
madeup prices masquerading as a digital
currency, it was essentially a fake
crypto scam, merely using crypto
terminology to hype up what they were
doing as some kind of financial
revolution and confuse vulnerable people
into not understanding how it works. And
thirdly, since they didn't have an
actual product, this meant it was also a
pyramid scheme.
However, Rouer and Sebastian were
already discussing what to do if they
got caught. Rouger's suggestion was
simple. Disappear and let someone else
In November of 2014, investors packed
into a small conference room at a hotel
to hear Rouger talk about her vision for
OneCoin. And there she made two big
announcements. Firstly, starting in 2
months, OneCoin would sell for actual
money on their internal exchange site
called Xcoin X. And secondly, OneCoin's
price was set at
54. A buzz went through the crowd. They
did the maths and realized that a $5,000
education package with 48,000 coins
would immediately be worth
$26,000. So, the investors scrambled to
buy packages after the news. By
Christmas, 10,000 people had bought
packages worth millions of dollars in
total. Then in January alone, OneCoin
did 15 million in
sales. That same month was the official
opening of OneCoin's exchange, where
people could trade their OneCoin for
actual money. But there was a catch.
People were only allowed to withdraw a
maximum of 1.5% of their OneCoin into
real money each day. And there was an
upper withdrawal limit.
Roua claimed it was just temporary
because she feared a bank run and wanted
to protect people's investments. But of
course, the truth was far more
sinister. People could only cash out a
small amount of their coins because the
company was a giant Ponzi scheme, simply
using the money from new investors to
pay up those who were cashing out.
That's why instead of listing on a
popular crypto exchange like Coinbase or
Kraken, OneCoin was using its own
internal site called Xcoin X, which they
had full control over, which is how Roua
was just changing the price to whatever
she wanted, which is why it always
seemed to go
up. However, investors didn't seem to
mind the strict withdrawal limits
because everyone believed in the promise
of OneCoin's future. Sure, it was 54
cents per coin now, but the price would
surely increase soon, so why sell now
and regret cashing out
early? And because people could at least
exchange a small amount of OneCoin for
cash, it made everything feel legitimate
as they were actually trading a small
amount of OneCoin for real
money. So throughout 2015, OneCoin
continued to grow beyond everyone's expectations.
expectations.
60 million in sales in March, 85 million
in April, and then the rate grew even
faster in May when Roua announced
OneCoin's price had doubled, now $18 per
coin. Investors were delighted to see
their balance on the OneCoin website
jump up so fast. Little did they know,
OneCoin's value was just Rou plucking a
random number out of thin air. But these
regular price increases would be used by
Rouger to ensure investors didn't want
to withdraw their money. The fear of
missing out was very real and it was
Rouger's number one tool to keep people
hooked on
OneCoin. Onecoin also started
introducing more expensive education
packages like the premium trader package for
for
€12,500 with around €40,000 OneCoin
tokens. Sure,
€12,500 seemed like a lot, but people
could see on the exchange that'd be
worth around
€40,000, so it seemed like a great
deal. OneCoin started packing out arenas
with music performances and fireworks
and thousands of chanting fans. At these
events, OneCoin would sell more
education packages. But they'd also put
a lot of focus on the top sellers in the
company. Those at the top of the pyramid
who are now earning hundreds of
thousands a month from selling one coin
to others. These top sellers were
publicly gifted Rolex watches partly to
thank them, but mostly to inspire the
lesser sellers to up their game next
month and sell
more. To many, OneCoin became a family.
At events, investors discussed how
they'd spend their newfound riches. When
OneCoin went public on one of the main
crypto exchanges like Coinbase, as at
that point they could trade all of their
OneCoin for cash, Rouger kept promising
they'd be going public very soon. So
investors all excitedly shared their
dream homes and vacations they were
planning to buy. They even created a
sign, your finger and thumb in the shape
of an O, to show you were part of the OneCoin
OneCoin
family. By October, OneCoin's price had
risen again. this time to around $2.50
per coin. And by November 2015, one year
after OneCoin's exchange opened, it hit
$1 billion in
sales. Money was coming in faster than
they could handle it. Roua bought a
luxury apartment in Hong Kong simply to
store the money stacked floor to ceiling
with cash from investors.
Thanks to their network of thousands of
sellers, all recruiting more sellers,
OneCoin just kept growing rapidly. And
to help increase the pressure to buy
more, OneCoin would frequently have
one-time special offers on their education
education
packages. Investors didn't question the
huge rise in OneCoin's supposed value
because it made sense to them. The hype
around one coin was what was bumping up
the price. And then the higher prices
increased the hype
further. Plus, people desperately wanted
to believe. For hundreds of thousands of
regular people all across the world,
OneCoin was a beacon of hope. For some,
it represented the opportunity to escape
a dangerous country, send their children
to college, or finally stop being so
worried about money.
A family from a council estate in London
invested 20,000. A single mother in
Tennessee invested a h 100,000. And more
than 50,000 Ugandans had joined the
pyramid. Some of them selling their
homes, their land, and even their
animals to get
in. But OneCoin was growing far faster
than Roua had ever imagined. And this
by the end of 2015, OneCoin was growing
too big too
quickly. Of all the money coming in,
onethird of it was paid out as referral
commissions, which meant tens of
millions of dollars had to be sent to
over a 100 countries around the world.
Even with Rouger's financial background,
moving millions of dollars each month
into her various accounts was bound to attract
attract
attention. In one case, a bank in Dubai
grew suspicious of these high
transactions being paid out to accounts
in the Cayman Islands, Uganda, and
Malta, places notorious for illegal
activity. So, the bank froze $50 million
in assets, leaving OneCoin scrambling
for cash.
So, Roua developed a plan. She contacted
a Saudi royal chic, a man who was
fascinated by new technology. Roua
convinced the chic to give her four USB
memory sticks containing 230,000
Bitcoin, which at the time was worth
around $50
million. In exchange, she gave the chic
a large amount of OneCoin and ownership
of her Dubai company. as using his
influence, he'd be able to contact the
bank and get it
unfrozen. But still, Roua needed to find
a more permanent answer to these banking
problems. And so that's when she reached
out to a financeier she knew from her
earlier days in banking. Gilbert,
Armentor. Gilbert was an international
financial expert with experience
operating the books for less than legal
companies. And so he became Onecoin's private
private
banker and he was very aware exactly
what Rouger was asking him to do. In his
calendar, Gilbert wrote his first call
was to discuss money transfer and laundering
laundering
issues. As they worked together, Roua
and Gilbert grew close, very close. Roua
started cheating on her husband with
Gilbert. By the end of 2015, Roua and
Gilbert set up what became known as the
Fiero Funds. Four separate accounts,
each with over a hundred million. These
accounts in the British Virgin Islands
and the Caymans, helped REA move money
around the world easier, without
worrying about banks freezing their
accounts or asking too many
questions. It was essentially a 9 figure
money laundering operation.
Now, Roua and the OneCoin team were free
to spend all the money they were making.
Rouger wore necklaces worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars. She commissioned a
$7.5 million yacht for private parties.
She bought a luxury flat in London and a
penthouse in
Dubai. But even though Roua had solved
her money problems, by the end of 2015,
she had an even bigger problem. They
When Roua created Onecoin, she announced
it had a capped amount of 2.1 billion
coins, never imagining she would reach
that limit in her
lifetime. But growth had been so much
faster than she ever imagined. And by
mid 2016, she had already sold more than 2.1
2.1
billion. Now, of course, investors
believed that OneCoin had its own
private blockchain, so it would be
impossible to sell more than what was
programmed at the start. But in reality,
OneCoin didn't have a blockchain, which
meant Rouger could sell an infinite
amount. The problem was she'd repeated
so many times about the hard limit of
2.1 billion. And if anyone ever worked
out they'd sold more than this,
OneCoin's perceived credibility would be instantly
