On July 1, local time in the United States on Thursday, the FBI put Ruja Ignatova, known as the "queen of cryptocurrencies", on the list of ten most wanted criminals, offering a reward of 100,000 US dollars to find her whereabouts.
Ignatova, the self-proclaimed "queen of cryptocurrencies," is indeed a bit unfamiliar to cryptocurrency circles in 2022, after all, her story ended in October 2017
The judiciary believes that Ignatova defrauded investors by accumulating $4 billion (about 26.8 billion yuan) between 2014 and 2017 by manipulating a scam called OneCoin. Investigators said that unlike Bitcoin's "mining" mechanism, her so-called cryptocurrency does not have blockchain technology at all to implement broadcast bookkeeping, and all the coins are fabricated out of thin air.
In May, Europol added The founder of the Ponzi scheme OneCoin and "crypto queen" Rua Ignatova on Europe's most wanted list and offered rewards of up to €5,000 to anyone who help tracked his whereabouts. According to information released by Europol, Rua Ignatova is wanted for fraud-related crimes, which has led to the erosion of people's economic interests in the EU. Rua Ignatova disappeared in 2017.
In this regard, some netizens said: "The reward is not high enough!" "That's it?" Gotta add money! ”
Under the guise of "cryptocurrency"
Engage in "Ponzi schemes"
"Hi, would you like to join our business plan?" On May 10, 2017, The "founder" of Vicardcoin, Rua Ignatova, left such a sentence on Twitter and disappeared from public view.
Back in 2014, Ignatova had just founded Vikhacoin in Bulgaria.
In the official introduction of Vicarnet, the founder Ignatova is a master's degree in economics from the University of Konstanz in Bulgaria, a double doctorate in law from oxford university and the university of Konstanz, and has served as the CEO and CFO of The largest fund management company in Bulgaria, with nearly 2 billion yuan in assets under management.
Bearing these titles, Ignatova traveled the globe to preach. On each appearance, Ignatova wore flamboyant costumes, expensive jewelry, and bright lipstick, so much so that her fanatical followers gave her a resounding name: the Queen of Crypto.
In her presentation, Ignatova claimed that Vicarnet is a cryptocurrency with a limited number, uniqueness, no inflation, and no counterfeiting. But in fact, Vicarnet is not a real cryptocurrency, its code, issuance and transaction records are not public, in fact, it is a "Ponzi scheme" without compromise.
Nevertheless, with Ignatova's incendiary preaching, promised high returns, and the expansion of pyramid schemes, Vicarcoin quickly swept the globe. Everywhere she went, she would have thousands of followers following. As long as you support Vikacoin, you are "family". Relying on the trust and support of her "family", Ignatova made a lot of money, according to BBC statistics, in 2016 alone, Ruja raised 4 billion yuan.
However, for the proponents of Vicarnet, the dream of "getting rich overnight" was soon shattered.
In 2017, the global cryptocurrency industry was in full swing, and Vicarcoin also held a grand carnival in Portugal. But to everyone's surprise, Ignatova, as the founder, did not show up. Ignatova herself could not be contacted by phone, email, and social networking sites, and Ignatova could not be found at the Vikhacoin headquarters in Sofia, bulgaria. At this point, some of her followers realized that they might have been deceived.
His whereabouts remain unknown
His brother has been arrested and sentenced to up to 90 years
As for Ignatova's whereabouts, the FBI said the last known whereabouts were when she traveled from Bulgaria to Greece on October 25, 2017, after which she may have wandered to other regions. She may use a German passport to travel to Bulgaria, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and Eastern European countries.
The FBI warned that Ignatova is believed to be travelling with armed escorts and may have changed her appearance through plastic surgery or other means.
In addition to the FBI, Europol, the EU law enforcement agency, also added Ignatova to the "List of Wanted Criminals in Europe" this year.
In an interview with the media, James Bartlett, a British journalist and co-writer of the BBC podcast "The Vanishing Queen of Cryptocurrencies", said that Ignatova's scam was second only to Wall Street giant Bernard Madoff. The scam involved at least billions of pounds, and people in every corner of the world went bankrupt and their homes were destroyed.
Bartlett said he didn't understand law enforcement agencies waiting so long to put her on the list, but at least showed that law enforcement believed she was alive.
According to previous BBC reports, Konstantin Ignatov, co-founder of the OneCoin pyramid scheme and brother of Ruya Ignatova, has pleaded guilty to participating in the multibillion-dollar scam, signing a plea on 4 October 2019 and currently facing up to 90 years in prison. After being arrested by the U.S. FBI at Los Angeles International Airport in March 2019, Ignatov recently pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including money laundering and fraud.
In China, 98 people involved in the "Vicard Coin" pyramid scheme involving an amount of more than 15 billion yuan were prosecuted
It is worth mentioning that Ignatova's criminal group has also been promoted to China through the form of pyramid schemes, creating the "Vika Coin Mega Network Pyramid Scheme Case".
According to a People's Daily report in May 2018, the procuratorate of Zhuzhou County, Hunan Province, prosecuted the last four suspects involved in the third batch of the "3.15" Vicarbita Network Pyramid Scheme case supervised by the Ministry of Public Security. It is reported that the case lasted for two years, and the Zhuzhou County Procuratorate reviewed and prosecuted a total of 106 people, prosecuted 98 people, and recovered nearly 1.7 billion yuan of money involved in the case, which is the largest number of people involved in the case and the largest amount of economic losses recovered since the establishment of the procuratorate.
In July 2016, the review and prosecution of a case of organizing pyramid schemes supervised by the Ministry of Public Security was handed over to the Zhuzhou County Procuratorate. It is understood that this case is a new type of network pyramid scheme case involving a huge amount of capital outflow, involving more than 20 provinces (cities) autonomous regions, hong Kong Special Administrative Regions and overseas countries across the country.
At present, the new type of network MLM mostly uses network software as a platform, with e-commerce, online venture capital, online equity investment, micro-business, virtual currency, financial mutual aid, charity relief, free tourism, etc. as the slogan, and online payment as a tool for capital circulation. The new type of network pyramid scheme mostly takes high yield, low threshold and fast return as bait, and constantly deceives new investors to achieve inflated profits, which has the new characteristics of virtuality, cross-regionality, concealment, financial and deception.
The "Vicardcoin" organization in this case is an organization that promotes virtual currency outside China, and the MLM website and marketing model established by the expatriate Lu Mou (i.e. Lua Ignatova) and the server is set up in Copenhagen, Denmark. The organization claims that "Vicarcoin" is the second generation of cryptocurrency after "Bitcoin", deceptively promoting that "Vicarcoin" has a huge appreciation space, tempting others to invest huge amounts of money to the website it has set up, while concealing the threshold for membership, requiring members to register can not withdraw, can not refund, directly absorb a large amount of funds.
To become a member of the "Vicardcoin" organization, you must pay different levels of "threshold fees" to obtain the corresponding level of activation codes under the recommendation of the old members to register as a member of different levels. The "threshold fee" is denominated in euros, namely 130 euros for entry-level, 530 euros for advanced classes, 1030 euros for professional level, 3030 euros for executive level, 5030 euros for tycoon level, 12530 euros for supreme tycoon level, 18830 euros for festival tycoon level, 31330 euros for 2-in-1 package, 36330 euros for 3-in-1 package, of which 30 euros are the commission for joining the club. It can be seen that the "Vicardcoin" organization essentially requires participants to pay the corresponding amount to purchase the activation code to obtain membership, and forms a hierarchy according to the amount of investment and the order of successive development, with the number of direct or indirect development personnel as the basis for remuneration or rebates, and lures others to participate in the new network MLM organization with high returns.
After receiving the case, the Zhuzhou County Procuratorate immediately set up a special case team, and the chief procurator and the deputy chief procurator in charge of public prosecution organized and commanded, and 5 key case-handling cadres and 1 technical personnel in the court were dispatched to concentrate on handling the case. In the early stage of investigation, it actively communicated with the Zhuzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, and appointed 3 public prosecutors to follow up the progress of the case throughout the process, guide the investigation, improve the evidence system, and standardize the case procedures.
Through full cooperation with the public security organs to form a joint force to crack down, the public security organs found out in accordance with the law that the "Vicardi" network pyramid scheme and marketing model involved in the case were established by the German general leader Lu Mou. As of May 2018, the MLM organization has developed 7 downlines, 27 capital pool accounts, more than 140 member levels, and more than 2 million registered member accounts in mainland China, involving an amount of more than 15 billion yuan.
These huge amounts of funds are aggregated from the bottom level of the pyramid of the pyramid of the pyramid to the upper level of the accounts, suspected of evading financial supervision and flowing out of the country and into foreign accounts, seriously endangering the country's financial security and stability. It is reported that the Zhuzhou County Procuratorate has undertaken part of the case involving 3 downlines of the MLM organization, and the amount involved in the case has been recovered for nearly 1.7 billion yuan.