Ruja Ignatova: The missing Cryptoqueen’s dark links with the Bulgarian underworld

In September 2019, a BBC podcast began reporting the extraordinary story of Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian woman wanted by the FBI after defrauding investors of $4.5 billion (£3.54 billion) through his fake cryptocurrency, before disappearing into thin air.

We are now following in his footsteps to try to discover his fate. BBC Eye Investigations and Panorama have looked into her close ties to an alleged Bulgarian organized crime boss and allegations that she was brutally murdered. Did Ms. Ignatova profit from the stolen billions or was she killed by the very people who were paid to protect her?

Ruja Ignatova, a graduate of Oxford University, was born in Bulgaria and raised in Germany. She had a successful career in finance before launching the OneCoin cryptocurrency in 2014.

Ms. Ignatova convinced millions of people around the world to invest in OneCoin, promising to eclipse the kind of huge returns seen by early Bitcoin investors.

But in reality, Ms Ignatova – known to many as Dr Ruja – had created a cleverly disguised investment fraud, without the digital record that underpins legitimate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

As German and American investigators closed in on Ms Ignatova in October 2017, she took an early morning Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens, never to be seen again.

For the past year, the BBC World Service’s Eye Investigations and Panorama have been trying to find out more about what happened to her and whether she is still alive.

To do this, it was essential to determine who his circle of friends was.

Richard Reinhardt, who began the investigation into OneCoin on behalf of the US Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, spoke to the BBC about a key figure that investigators had never named publicly before.

The BBC understands that this is the man who had been responsible for ensuring Ms Ignatova’s security, Hristoforos Nikos Amanatidis, better known as Taki.

“We were told that a drug bigwig was in charge of his physical security,” Mr. Reinhardt said in his first interview since retiring at the end of 2023.

“Taki was mentioned more than once, it was not an isolated case. This was a recurring theme.

This matched information we already had – US government lawyers had said in 2019 that Ms Ignatova’s security chief was a major organized crime figure in Bulgaria, but did not name him.

“We have evidence that a very important, if not the most prolific drug trafficker of all time in Bulgaria, was closely linked to OneCoin – he served as a personal security guard [de Ruja Ignatova] “, said an assistant prosecutor.

This is the same “security chief” that another US government lawyer said was “involved in the disappearance” of Ms. Ignatova in court a day earlier.

Mr. Reinhardt said Ms. Ignatova was a far more sophisticated criminal than most people realize.

“It’s like a white-collar criminal combined with a drug dealer or mafia member on steroids.”

This theory appears to be supported by leaked Europol documents, seen by the BBC, which show that – before Ms Ignatova disappeared in 2017 – Bulgarian police had established links between her and Taki .

In these documents, police suspect Taki of using OneCoin’s financial network to launder drug trafficking proceeds.

In his home country of Bulgaria, Taki has almost mythical status – an El Chapo or a Pablo Escobar. He is widely believed to be the head of a Bulgarian criminal organization and a prolific drug trafficker. He and his associates were investigated for armed robbery, drug trafficking and murder, but he was never successfully prosecuted for anything.

“When we talk about Taki, he is the head of the mafia in Bulgaria. He is extremely powerful,” says a former Bulgarian deputy minister, Ivan Hristanov, who in 2022 investigated allegations that Taki ran a criminal network with the help of corrupt officials – and believes that was the case .

“Taki is a ghost. You will never see it. We only hear about him. He speaks to you through other people. If you don’t listen, you disappear from the earth.”

“The only person who could protect her [Ignatova] of all these investigations, including foreign agencies, it was Taki.

The BBC has written to the Bulgarian government over allegations of corrupt officials. The government did not respond. The prosecutor’s office in Sofia, the capital, says it “does not cover crimes and people who may have committed crimes.”

Taki is now believed to live in Dubai, where Ms Ignatova bought a luxury penthouse and her bank accounts received tens of millions of dollars from the OneCoin scam.

It is unclear how Taki and Ms. Ignatova met, or whether he was involved with OneCoin from the start, but many sources claim that they had a close personal relationship and that he was the godfather of Ms. Ignatova.

A Bulgarian Source close to Ms Ignatova told the BBC she paid Taki up to 100,000 euros a month for protection

Other financial ties appear to exist between Ms. Ignatova and Taki.

Europol documents show a complex transaction involving the sale of land on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, which links one of Ms Ignatova’s companies to Taki’s wife.

The secret police documents were passed to the BBC by Frank Schneider, a former spy and adviser to Ms Ignatova, who has now disappeared.

He told us his former boss worked with “crooks” and “gangsters.”

When we interviewed Mr. Schneider at his home in France, he was under house arrest, awaiting extradition to the United States in connection with the OneCoin scam. He was not ready to reveal any names, however.

“I’m not going to tell you who, because I have a family… This is real organized crime.”

But in the end, Ms. Ignatova’s protector may have turned into an abuser.

In 2022, Bulgarian investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov and his colleagues at the investigative media outlet bird.bg received a police report found at the home of a murdered Bulgarian police officer.

In it, a police informant describes hearing Taki’s brother-in-law say, while drunk, that Ms. Ignatova had been murdered on Taki’s orders in late 2018, and that her body had been dismembered and dumped on a yacht in the Ionian Sea. Mr. Stoyanov says this story is “very, very possible.”

The authenticity of the police document has been confirmed by Bulgarian authorities, and many of Taki’s criminal associates believe the theory that he had him murdered is true, Mr. Stoyanov said.

However, the BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.

The associates’ reasoning is that Ms. Ignatova, who was wanted, had become a liability for Taki, who wanted to eliminate her links to the OneCoin scam.

Among these associates is Krasimir Kamenov, known as Kuro, who is wanted by Interpol for murder.

Mr. Stoyanov claims that Kuro told him that he had heard Taki discussing his criminal activities in front of Ms. Ignatova and that, when Kuro asked Taki if he should do this, Taki replied: “Don’t worry, she is like dead”: “Don’t worry, she’s like dead.”

Kuro also claimed to have spoken to the CIA about Taki, including the allegation that Taki ordered the murder of Ms. Ignatova. Sources close to Kuro confirmed to the BBC that this meeting took place at the end of 2022.

In May 2023, Kuro was murdered at his home in Cape Town, along with his wife and two others who worked for him. South African police are still searching for the killers, but former Bulgarian deputy minister Hristanov believes Kuro’s murder is linked to Taki.

“Some people had to be eliminated because they knew too much about Taki.

“It was a kind of public execution that was more like a statement. Be careful who you deal with,” he told us.

Since the publication of Ms. Ignatova’s murder allegations, journalist Dimitar Stoyanov says he and his colleagues have received death threats, forcing him to temporarily leave Bulgaria for the fourth time in his career.

Mr. Stoyanov does not claim to know the motive for the alleged murder, but property records show, and he has been told by eyewitnesses, that since Ms. Ignatova’s disappearance, a number of his Bulgarian properties are now used by related people to Taki.

Taki was never arrested after being accused of having Ms Ignatova murdered. His body was never found and investigators say they don’t have enough evidence to prosecute him.

But Richard Reinhardt, a former IRS investigator, thinks Ms. Ignatova is probably dead. Although he has not seen any evidence linking his death to Taki, he believes it is consistent with the way drug cartels operate.

“There is no honor among thieves… knowing how violent the cartels are, so [Taki] thought she was a threat to him…he would probably eliminate her rather than get caught.”

The BBC wrote to Taki’s lawyers about the allegations in this investigation, but they did not respond.

In 2022, Ms. Ignatova was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, where she remains today.

The BBC team behind The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast have been given various reports about Ms Ignatova’s whereabouts following her alleged murder, including details of a police operation in Greece to catch her in 2022 , which ended in failure.

It could be that the rumors of his death are just another brilliant move to put everyone on the wrong track.

If so, as the years go by, it will likely become increasingly difficult for him to stay on the run.

“At some point, it’s as if Elvis Presley was still alive…It’s not very likely,” Mr. Hristanov says.

According to Mr. Reinhardt, the FBI “doesn’t keep people in the top ten list for the sake of it.” But he would only remove someone from the list if there was “definitive proof” of their death. And given the circumstances, Ruja Ignatova may never get one.

This means that, for now at least, the missing Cryptoqueen remains a hunted woman.

If you have any information about Dr Ruja Ignatova you can email BBC journalists at [email protected].