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The OneCoin scam, a global fraud, will be featured on the upcoming episode of In Pursuit with John Walsh. Started in late 2014, it falsely claimed to trade cryptocurrencies for educational materials.
Within a year, it received a financial risk warning. The founder, Ruja Ignatova, swindled around $4 billion from investors before disappearing. The episode, titled Crypto Queenpin, airs on June 19, 2024, at 10 p.m. EST on Investigation Discovery.
The official synopsis of the episode 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 sexually abusing a teenage girl."
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Why was OneCoin considered illegitimate?
The fallout from the OneCoin tragedy was named as one of the biggest scams in history by The Times. The cryptocurrency scheme was started in 2014 by ex-McKinsey & Company star employee, Ruja Ignatova, who collaborated with Sebastian Greenwood to run the company.
While Ignatova introduced herself as the Cryptoqueen at events and promotions, she pitched the currency against BitCoin with the promise to take over the trade markets in the near future. Hosted on OneCoin Ltd's servers, investors could purchase educational material priced anywhere between 100 euros to 118,000 euros in exchange for tokens to mine OneCoin.
It was a multi-level marketing (MLM) model that allured investors with their cryptocurrency which had no trace of blockchains, unlike BitCoin. The value of the currency was arbitrarily decided by the company and Ignatova and thus, manipulated to show a growing trend, per CNN Business. The investors would receive perks and commissions based on referrals.
The same CNN Business report mentioned that Ignatova wrote to Greenwood in 2014 saying,
“It might not be (something) really clean or that I normally work on or even can be proud of (except with you in private when we make the money).”
In another email to Greenwood, Ruja Ignatova mentioned,
“We are not mining actually but telling people sh*t.”
The coin started suffering majorly around 2016 as it failed to sell the coins to make up for the losses incurred by the company. As law enforcement agencies investigated about the legitimacy of the currency, Ruja Ignatova flew out of Sofia to Athens and disappeared into thin air with her wealth, per BBC News.
Which countries had flagged OneCoin as unsafe?
OneCoin was forced to cease its activity in Bulgaria after a warning from the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) in September 2015. This was followed by a Daily Mirror report called the coins to be worthless and part of a get-rich-quick scheme.
In 2016, it was added to observation lists of multiple countries such as Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Norway, and Latvia while it was banned in Italy. China seized assets valued at $30.8 million and arrested investors the same year.
Croatia, India, Thailand, Belize, Germany, and Vietnam restricted the digital currency in multiple ways in 2017.
Catch all the details in the new episode of In Pursuit with John Walsh as it airs on Investigation Discovery on Wednesday.
