OneCoin – The biggest Ponzi scheme ever

Introduction – What is OneCoin?

OneCoin came out in 2014, around the same time that Bitcoin was becoming more famous. Ruja Ignatova, the person who came up with the idea for OneCoin, marketed it as an easier and more accessible option to Bitcoin. She promised investors big returns. Ignatova, who has worked as a lawyer and a financial consultant, was sure that OneCoin would make people rich quickly. This led thousands of people to invest.

Ignatova quickly grew OneCoin’s reach by opening offices in Bulgaria, Dubai, and Hong Kong. She talked about it as the next big thing in cryptocurrency at big events and made up ads that appeared in trustworthy publications. This approach took advantage of people’s fear of missing out on a good chance to make money.

OneCoin’s success depended on a group of rich multi-level marketers who were posed as top-level investors. As money came in from all over the world, by 2017 nearly 1 million people in 175 countries had put in about EUR 4 billion. But Ignatova kept buyers waiting for months by not letting exchanges list the coin at first, which caused its price to rise.

Eventually, the scheme collapsed, leaving investors, many of whom had invested their life savings, in financial ruin.

Let’s learn more about this Ponzi scheme.

Who is the mastermind behind OneCoin?

Ruja Ignatova, born in Bulgaria in 1980, had an early affinity for the finer things in life. She pursued a Ph.D. in international law and married a lawyer from a prestigious firm. But Ignatova wanted more, even though her life in Germany was good.

Sebastian Greenwood and her brother Konstantin Ignatov were among the important people who helped Ignatova launch OneCoin in 2014. She attempted to prevent a German company from going bankrupt while she was employed at McKinsey prior to that. OneCoin was heralded as the cryptocurrency industry’s next big thing, with investors guaranteed enormous riches.

Ignatova’s extravagant lifestyle and celebrity contacts helped OneCoin become more popular. However, OneCoin operated in the background as a pyramid scheme, collecting funds from fresh investors to pay off old ones for their capital.

Konstantin Ignatov, her brother, played a significant role in the scam’s operation. He later testified against Ruja, admitting his involvement in running OneCoin after her disappearance. However, his knowledge of her whereabouts remains unclear. Sebastian Greenwood, co-founder of OneCoin, was the key advocate for this change. After admitting his guilt, Greenwood was given a sentence of 20 years in prison.

What was the OneCoin scam? 

It was in June 2016 that Dr. Ruja Ignatova spoke at Wembley Stadium in support of OneCoin, a cryptocurrency that said it would be the upcoming breakthrough after Bitcoin. The market value of OneCoin was so high that it was on par with Bitcoin’s. It was advertised as a new digital currency. However, what seemed like a fresh idea was actually a huge Ponzi scheme that was posed as an MLM plan.

With promises of secure transactions, user-friendly features, and the possibility of earning sizable profits through mining, OneCoin enticed investors. However, OneCoin was worthless in reality, and its purported blockchain infrastructure was a hoax. The platform made most of its money by selling educational materials and using its cryptocurrency for marketing. Users could only trade OneCoins within the platform.

Investors poured billions of dollars into OneCoin even though many central banks and financial authorities, including Germany’s federal financial supervisory body, warned them not to. However, doubts and claims of scam grew as proof of its pyramid scheme nature came to light.

In 2017, Dr. Ruja Ignatova suddenly vanished, leaving a trail of lawsuits and investigations in her wake. In 2019, OneCoin stopped working, but lawsuits against its owners and other employees are still going on.

People should be aware of the risks of investment scams and do a lot of study before putting money into cryptocurrencies or any other financial opportunity because of the OneCoin story. Even though the scam is over, no one knows where Dr. Ruja Ignatova is. This adds to the mystery of one of the biggest coin scams ever.

How was this scam revealed?

When Ruja Ignatova failed to show up for a conference of OneCoin promoters in Lisbon in 2017, it was the beginning of the end for the OneCoin hoax. Concerned about her disappearance, promoters speculated that she might have suffered harm from adversaries. Nevertheless, it was later discovered through court documents that Ignatova had left her whereabouts unknown after boarding a flight from Sofia to Athens two weeks after the incident.

Ignatova’s brother Konstantin took over the operation while she was in hiding. The scam went on even after Bulgarian authorities raided OneCoin’s offices in 2018. There were numerous alerts about OneCoin’s fraudulent activities, including disclosures made by a blockchain developer who OneCoin had contacted to build a blockchain.

The OneCoin website was shut down later that year as a result of the scam, which continued until Konstantin Ignatov was arrested in Los Angeles in March 2019. The con targets people all over the world, from wealthy communities to the slums of Uganda. People like Igor Alberts, who had previously prospered in multilevel marketing, faced the hard reality of their money drying up. Success stories became tales of loss.

Victims like the young Ugandan Daniel Lienhardt, who invested in OneCoin, ended up in terrible situations. Jen McAdam and some other victims persisted in their efforts to bring justice to those impacted by the scheme. Many investors remained ignorant of the real outcome of their investments even after the scam was exposed.

Conclusion

So you might have a question about what happened to OneCoin scammers.

After the collapse of the infamous OneCoin scam, the fate of its key figures took various twists and turns. Sebastian Greenwood, one of the prominent faces of the scheme, found himself indicted and incarcerated in a New York prison awaiting trial. Reports emerged that he had illicitly transferred $20 million using a smuggled phone.

Konstantin Ignatov, who is brother to Ruja Ignatova, the brain behind OneCoin, pleaded guilty and gave information about what happened to his sister. Ignatov said that Ruja had said she was afraid of being caught by the police before she disappeared. Ignatov’s credibility was called into question during his trial, even though he cooperated and went into witness security.

At the same time, cases were going on in Germany against lawyers who worked with Ruja Ignatova. A lot of stories went around about where Ignatova was, including the idea that she had multiple passports and plastic surgery to avoid being caught.

There were unconfirmed reports that Ignatova was involved in funding terrorists and that she got into the United Arab Emirates using a diplomatic passport. Reports say Ignatova washed terrorist groups’ money by sending it through banks to war zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, supposedly with the help of a state that supports terrorism.

Even though reporters and private agents did a lot of work looking for Ignatova, she remained elusive. The story of OneCoin continues to get a lot of attention as one of the worst crypto scams and Ponzi schemes ever. It shows how far-reaching the effects of financial theft can be.