The hunt for the infamous “CryptoQueen,” Ruja Ignatova, took a dark turn as an investigation by Bulgarian news outlet Bird reported that she was killed in 2018, citing documents reportedly found in the possession of a murdered Bulgarian police official.
Ignatova was head of the multimillion-dollar OneCoin scam and disappeared after allegedly fleecing investors out of as much as $5 billion in 2017. She was added to international fugitive lists, including the FBI’s ten most wanted and Europe’s most wanted list. If the Bird report is true, she achieved this notoriety last summer—up to two years after her supposed death.
Ruja Ignatova, a.k.a. ‘Cryptoqueen’, has been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for allegedly defrauding investors of more than $4 billion through the OneCoin cryptocurrency company pic.twitter.com/fUL5Dmic46
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) June 30, 2022
According to a story published on February 17, Bird reporters Dimitar Stoyanov and Atanas Tchobanov say police documents show that Ignatova was killed on the orders of a drug lord aboard his yacht. Her killer, according to an unnamed source in the police report, was an associate of Ignatova but did not say if they were involved in the OneCoin scam.
According to Bird, Ignatova’s body was dismembered and dumped in the Ionian Sea, a body of water south of the Adriatic Sea between Italy and Greece.
The report surfaces the same week Ignatova’s former boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the OneCoin scam.
It should be noted that the police documents cited in the report say that the source claiming that Ignatova was killed was intoxicated at the time. Decrypt has been unable to reach Bird for further
