Crypto Queen killed on yacht 5 years ago? New threads in a high-profile scandal

One of the largest, and without a doubt one of the most glamorous cryptocurrency fraudsters, who disappeared from 4 billion euros, was supposedly killed on a yacht 5 years ago on the orders of a drug lord. This is what the interviews with investigative journalists have just published.

Crypto Queen, or Dr. Ruja Ignatova, disappeared along with 3,4 billion British pounds (then around 4 billion euros), after the token scandal OneCoin, which was supposed to be a breakthrough in the world of cryptocurrencies, and turned out to be a classic financial pyramid.

Crypto Queen Killed 5 Years Ago?

The case of finding her has taken an unexpected direction in recent days. On March 25, 2022, the head of the General Directorate of the State Police, Lubomir Ivanov, was shot dead in Bulgaria. It later turned out that he was collecting evidence at home, which was seized by investigators. Among them were e.g. call recordings.

They were reached by investigative journalists Dimitar Stoyanov and Atanas Tchobanov from Bulgaria, who just posted them on the Internet. According to them, the head of the Bulgarian police worked for one of Bulgaria's biggest drug lords, Hristoforos Amanatidis, also known as Taki.

The evidence shows that it was Taki who ordered the assassination of Crypto Queen to cover up his involvement in the OneCoin scandal. This allegedly happened on a yacht in Greece in November 2018. Ruja Ignatova, who was killed, was then cut into pieces and thrown into the Ionian Sea. The remains were never found because no one was looking for them. But there is no trace of them now. We also know who was supposed to kill her. It was supposed to be Hristo Hristov, who was later caught in the Netherlands with a large amount of heroin.

The Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior has not commented on the case. Ruja Ignatova, however, is still wanted by Interpol and Europol in 194 countries. Her whereabouts remain subject to speculation since she boarded a flight from Sofia, Bulgaria to Athens, Greece on October 25, 2017.

Who was/is the Crypto Queen?

Born in 1980, young Ruja Ignatova grew up in Bulgaria but moved to Germany with her parents in 1990. She claims to have graduated from Oxford. In 2005, she obtained a PhD in international law at the University of Konstanz. She worked at McKinsey & Company and then decided to launch a project that would change the world of cryptocurrencies. Successor Bitcoin was supposed to be her OneCoin, which was created in 2014.

For 3 years, people from all over the world, mainly from Asia, invested in it. In the first half of 2016 alone, the Chinese invested over USD 400 million in OneCoin.

READ: Crypto Queen - The story of one of the biggest crypto scams in history

OneCoin – a cryptocurrency caught cheating

The project started getting busy in 2016. He was observed by services from Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Latvia. At the end of 2016, the Italian regulator Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato began an investigation into unfair promotional practices of the OneCoin cryptocurrency.

In February 2017, OneCoin was banned. In the same year, the company argued that it had a license from the Vietnamese regulator, which quickly denied this. The documents were forged, and ineptly at that. The Central Bank of Croatia also issued a warning against OneCoin.

The disappearance of the Crypto Queen

Just in 2017, Dr. Ruja Ivanova disappeared. She flew from Sofia to Athens on October 25, 2017 and has not been heard from since. Just like after the money paid by would-be buyers of the great OneCoin project.

The police searched the offices of OneCoin in Sofia, but no people involved in creating a financial pyramid, which turned out to be this cryptocurrency, were not caught. Only in 2019 brother CryptoQueen - Konstantin Ignatov He was arrested and charged with fraud and money laundering. Lawyer Mark Scott was also charged with fraud and money laundering. The boss, however, was never caught. There was no trace of her either. Is it because she was long dead?

Since May 2022, Ruja Ignatova has been on the list of most wanted criminals by Interpol. From June 2020 also on the FBI list Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.