In Pursuit with John Walsh on ID: What charges did Ruja Ignatova face?

The worldwide pursuit of Ruja Ignatova, the founder of OneCoin, has turned her into one of the most wanted women in the world. She disappeared in October 2017 with the wealth she had defrauded from investors.

Ignatova was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, per CNN Business. Ruja looks at 90 years of prison sentence if she is ever apprehended.

The new episode of In Pursuit With John Walsh titled Crypto Queenpin showcases Ruja Ignatova's crimes as it aired on June 19, 2024, at 10 pm EST on Investigation Discovery. The official synopsis reads:

"John takes on accused financial fraudster Ruja Ignatova, whose alleged crypto con landed her on the FBI's top ten most wanted list; Callahan heads to Pennsylvania on the trail of Freddy Calle, accused of s*xually abusing a teenage girl."

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How did Ruja Ignatova escape the charges?

On October 25, 2017, Ruja Ignatova boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia and landed in Athens only to be never seen again. Her disappearance came in light of the growing tension amid investigations from Germany and the United States. Ignatova was scheduled to appear for a talk in Lisbon in October where she failed to appear, thus spreading the word that she had fled.

BBC News reported in 2022 that leaked police reports might have alerted Ruja of her impending arrest. The leaked files were allegedly passed on to Ignatova by her advisor and the erstwhile spy, Frank Schneider.

However, Schneider denied such claims, revealing that he had received them in a USB memory stick from the CryptoQueen herself. He further shared:

"When the Bulgarians participated at certain Europol meetings, it only took hours for her to get a complete rundown and get the minutes of what was said in those meetings. I can only deduce that it came from the circles that she was in and the connections that she had through a variety of influential personalities."

On the other hand, CNN Business reported that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation believed that Ignatova had bugged her boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta's apartment. Armenta had been in the middle of an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office regarding financial transactions for OneCoin.

It was during this time that she is believed to have allegedly found out about an ongoing federal probe into OneCoin with which Armenta was reportedly cooperating.

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Is Ruja Ignatova dead?

A 2024 BBC report mentioned the involvement of the Bulgarian crimelord Hristoforos Amanatidis in Ruja Ignatova's disappearance. Popularly known as Taki, Amanatidis is suspected to have used OneCoin's financial network to launder his money. The Bulgarian deputy minister, Ivan Hristanov, shared with BBC News:

“Taki is the ghost. You'll never see him. You only hear about him. He's talking to you through other people. If you don't listen, you just disappear from earth. The only person who can protect her [Ignatova] from all those investigations, including from foreign agencies - it was Taki.”

This also came in light of the rumors of Ruja Ignatova's alleged death. A bird.bg report mentioned the contents of a leaked Bulgarian police report wherein a police informant had overheard Taki's brother-in-law give a drunken account of Ruja Ignatova's execution.

Ignatova had allegedly been executed, dismembered, and dumped into the Ionian Sea from a yacht in November 2018 on Taki's command, per BBC News. However, she continues to remain on the FBI Most Wanted Fugitives, making her the 11th woman to join the list in its history.

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Catch all the details in the new episode of In Pursuit with John Walsh on Discovery Plus.