RUJA IGNATOVA is wanted by the FBI for scamming investors out of £3.54billion. The Bulgarian woman disappeared after her crimes came to light.
Here's everything you need to know. Ruja Plamenova Ignatova was born on May 30, 1980 in Bulgaria. Ignatova emigrated to Germany with her family when she was ten-years-old before spending part of her childhood in Schramberg.
Claims circulated that she may have studied at University of Oxford in England but there has been no confirmation. In 2005 she earned a PhD in private international law from the University of Konstanz in Germany. Ignatova was married to the German lawyer Bjorn Strehl and the pair had a daughter together in 2016.
Ignatova was first convicted of fraud in Germany in 2012 in connection with her father Plamen Ignatov's acquisition of a company. She was given a suspended sentence of 14 months imprisonment. The following year she was involved with a multi-level marketing scam called BigCoin before creating OneCoin in 2014.
Ignatova is wanted by the FBI after scamming investors out of $4.5bn (£3.54bn) through her fake cryptocurrency business OneCoin.
In early 2019, she was charged by US authorities for wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. She was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted in June 2022, with a $250,000 reward being offered for finding her. Ignatova is the subject of an international Interpol warrant by German authorities.
Reporting in 2023 and 2024 suggested that Ignatova may have been murdered in 2018.