Ian Sansom

Where is Ruja Ignatova, the self-styled cryptoqueen, hiding?

The evil genius behind OneCoin, who swindled trusting people out of billions, has been missing since 2017 and is now on Europol’s most wanted list

Ruja Ignatova [Getty Images]

This is a depressing book. It’s a reminder of everything that is sick, broken and generally maledicted about the human condition. It’s also a book based on a podcast, which brings difficulties of its own.

To cut a very long story short, The Missing Cryptoqueen tells the true story of a Bulgarian crook named Ruja Ignatova, the self-styled cryptoqueen of the book’s title. In 2014, she set up a pyramid scheme-cum-multi-level-marketing scam based on a fake cryptocurrency called OneCoin. In 2017, having swindled people out of billions of pounds, dollars, euros and just about every other currency on the planet, and with the authorities closing in, Ignatova suddenly went missing. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

‘Getting a dental appointment is like pulling teeth.’

It’s a great story and a spectacular con. Jamie Bartlett’s unenviable task is to try to make sense of the entire enterprise, explaining the mysteries and complexities of cryptocurrency and blockchains, investigating the use of complex company structures and the function of foreign exchange platforms, as well as sketching in the involvement of a cast of hundreds of supporting characters. These include Ignatova’s business partner and all-round slimebag Sebastian Greenwood; the notorious sleazeball salesman Igor Alberts; and Igantova’s dupe of a brother, Konstantin. The names of the disreputable mount up almost as quickly as their ill-gotten gains, with thousands, then millions and billions extracted by OneCoin from legions of the gullible attending bizarre sales conferences and corporate events in hotels and exhibition centres all over the world.

So how on earth did Ignatova do it? Bartlett calls her a genius business-woman, but it’s pretty clear she was also just an everyday narcissistic predator, exploiting the hopes and fears of people she referred to as ‘monkeys’, the sort who fail to read the small print and who feel shortchanged in the great 21st-century tech rush to riches.

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