The Missing Cryptoqueen: Dead or Alive? - BBC World Service Documentaries

What if you're just telling me a story and I don't know my head is spinning? Trust me, we'll talk about it. I think... I have to do it. I should trust you. but it's very difficult to trust you. when all this shit has happened. Did you think they were recording you at that moment? I think at some point, probably. You need to be careful. Don't use email. Face to face or encrypted phones, nothing else is safe, believe me. And then our source makes a dumb statement, something to the effect that I'm just trying to keep these cops away from me, basically, and then pfft, there was no goodbye or you're a bastard or I know what you're up to.

It was just one click and it was gone. A Bulgarian woman has been included in the FBI's ten most wanted list. Ruja Ignatova founded and ran one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, selling a fake cryptocurrency called OneCoin and raising billions of dollars. For five years, the BBC has been investigating the

missing

crypto queen, a fraudster who stole billions. Now there may be a breakthrough. Finally, we have information that perhaps this was not just a simple scam. Was she really involved in something much darker? Those at the heart of Ruja Ignatova's empire and those pursuing her reveal for the first time how she may be linked to a major criminal gang.

She was physically threatened. These people were criminals. Gangsters. And then Ruja disappeared from the face of the earth. This is real and serious organized crime. Ruja knew too much and she messed with the wrong guys. Will new evidence finally solve the mystery of what happened to the

world

's most wanted woman? Let's give a warm round of applause to our founder, to our dear... Dr. Ruja, one, two, three... applause, please. It is truly a pleasure for me to be here a year and a half after we launched our cryptocurrency OneCoin and already wrote history. But this is only the beginning.

Dr. Ruja Ignatova is the founder of the OneCoin cryptocurrency. Investors pay hundreds to attend his events around the

world

. The moment she comes out, everyone raises their cameras on her, oh my god, it's Dr. Ruja herself! Because many of these investors had never seen it before. She was real. She really was there. This currency is going to be number one worldwide. We will be the biggest there are. And we will write the story. I think what makes us different is our vision. We are more than a single currency. Promising huge profits, OneCoin claimed to have over three million investors worldwide.

For me going to Wembley was incredible, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, expensive watches. I thought, again, it was like Hollywood. I still feel like it was a dream. And no one, no one can compare to us. Ruja had a burning ambition to get rich and she was also extremely good at playing the role of an amazing cryptocurrency CEO. We will double the coins in her accounts. When I saw Dr. Ruja Ignatova talking about OneCoin, it was an exaggeration that you invest in OneCoin and you can buy villas. You can buy good cars. She is putting people out of her financial misery.

And I thank you so much for being here, sharing my vision, and making this happen. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I met Ruja around February 2016. I thought she was incredibly successful. Ruja was a very interesting person, very charming, very educated and very knowledgeable. She was a very nice person to work with. I myself did not work for OneCoin. I ran Ruja's private family office in London to invest Ruja's personal fortune. She likes the fact that she is rich. She liked other people to know that she was rich. She would always throw great parties.

I went to her birthday party, it was a typical Ruja party, everyone dressed to the nines, Ruja dripping with diamonds from head to toe. She always says: Look at me. Look how successful I am. But look at my CV. I went to Oxford University. I have a doctorate in international law. She was a true high-flyer and she was always the smartest person in every room she walked into. Cryptocurrencies are the future of online monetary transactions. The timing could not be better. Bitcoin shows us the way, but the best is yet to come. Ruja launched the OneCoin cryptocurrency during a time of financial revolution.

Cryptocurrencies, a type of digital cash, are a completely new way to create and send money. A lot of excitement and excitement about it. People have become millionaires overnight because bitcoin prices skyrocketed and I wanted to be a part of that. I don't want to miss another opportunity again. I actually opened a bank account and used the overdraft to buy the cryptocurrency and thought, this must be legit. So I invested all the money in the hope that, you know, that would solve my financial problems because at the time I was £20,000 in debt and I wasn't even making ten grand a year.

But OneCoin was never really a cryptocurrency. I had all the details, but that was just a ruse. What it was was a Ponzi scheme, a very old-fashioned scam and a very simple scam, which is taking investments from new investors and using that investment to pay the old investors a small return. And continue like this for as long as possible. Always taking a percentage for you. And at the top is Dr. Ruja. We are a global currency and no other cryptocurrency has as many users as us. Ruja Ignatova and the OneCoin leaders stole $4.5 billion from their investors.

I lost all my money and had to keep borrowing money from credit card companies and banks. It was a really sad, embarrassing and depressing time in my life. We know that there are investors all over the world. But OneCoin had a Bulgarian founder. The offices were in Sofia. But what we found out is that Britain played a really big role in the scam. It was the lawyers and PR people who allowed the scam to continue. Rob Byrne and Jamie Bartlett are part of a BBC team investigating one of the biggest frauds in history. The FBI and specialized investigators from the Internal Revenue Service launched a criminal investigation in 2016.

They have been investigating OneCoin and Dr. Ruja for five years, they still don't really know what the hell happened and finally someone from the authorities who is state investigating from that side he actually agreed to talk to me about what really happened. He was the main investigator. He started the whole case. It's definitely the most interesting story I've found in 26 years. They are just incredible characters, they are deceiving people left and right, they know how to get their way, the FBI did a good job helping us and we couldn't have done it without them, but the IRS is the one that brings that. to the federal prosecutor's office.

When he first saw Dr. Ruja, what did he think of her? You knew you were dealing with a scammer. We knew that was all smoke and mirrors. I think it was a scam from day one. Because if you look at where all the money ended up, it ended up in her pockets. Private jets, they had multi-million dollar mansions each, so Dubai, London and Germany are the main three that we knew about. We've heard of apartments full of cash in Hong Kong and Thailand. He had a yacht worth several million dollars. Ruja's multimillion-dollar lifestyle of yachts and seaside mansions was funded by a complex financial network.

We were able to trace billions of dollars. We were very close to that figure of four and a half billion dollars. And then, when you start to piece together the money trails, Pandora's box opens. How is it moving, what kind of scale are we talking about here? What we are seeing is hundreds of millions of dollars transferred to shell companies. Ruja's problem is that she is receiving millions and millions, billions of euros, and she needs to launder them somehow. He needs to convert it into money that he can use, without connection to OneCoin. So she has this really sophisticated system to try to launder all of the OneCoin investors' profits.

Ruja used her boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta, to launder OneCoin money. In 2017, after following him for a year, American authorities saw her opportunity. Gilbert had a private jet just to get back and forth to see her. We're on the tarmac, waiting for him to get off the plane, and just like you see in the movies, when he walks in, we have a warrant for his arrest. Her face just falls. It must be recognized that she accepts responsibility. She knew she was out of time. So we need you to tell us, what are you doing? Basically. Tell us everything you know about what's happening.

To stay one step ahead of the law, Ruja had recruited a controversial figure from Luxembourg. I think if there's one person who knows what happened to Ruja, it's probably Frank Schneider. The word spy already has a pretty negative connotation because it actually means doing something a little sleazy. I don't know. I took a client, I took the wrong client. I said yes to the wrong person. I'm not saying I wasn't attracted to the potential financial gains. I mean, of course. Frank Schneider is a former high-level spy who now runs a private intelligence agency. Frank had contacts, he knew how the dark side of this world really worked, he knew how espionage really worked.

The way I understood Frank Schneider's role was as if intelligence cut off Ruja's security. They were very, very close. Frank was very protective of Ruja. Ruja seemed very protective of Frank. Ruja was very bright, extremely intelligent. But her success was accompanied by all kinds of problems, specifically her boyfriend, Gilbert. We found out pretty much early on that Gilbert was a problem. I definitely would have wanted to know absolutely everything about him. Ruja had been told that her lover, Gilbert Armenta, had been arrested. They warned him that he might talk. Frank or Ruja bought the house above Gilbert specifically to have spies there listening to what Gilbert was doing.

She was a very sophisticated woman. This wasn't your typical white collar criminal. Then we get all these phone calls that Ruja has been secretly recording of her talking to her boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta. Hello. Hey, wait a second, let me turn the thing off. Oh how are you baby? I'm fine. Yeah? I'm just worried about you. I miss you a lot. But Gilbert Armenta is also working with the FBI and IRS recording calls to try to get information out of Ruja. This is not like a three or four call phone conversation. This lasts over a period of several weeks and you are simply listening to the conversation as it happens.

Yeah, on the topic of trust and paranoia, of course we can stop trusting people, we can just be myself and whatever, but on the other hand, you know, that also makes life very limited and very difficult. In some things I don't trust you at all, like I wouldn't lie to you. I think... I have to do it. So it all feels like a game where they're trying to figure each other out. I'm sorry to tell you this, I should trust you, but it's really hard to trust you when all this shit has happened. I agree I agree.

I wouldn't like to agree with you but yes, you are right. It doesn't seem like something that happens in real life. She spied on you and you spied on her. We were all thinking, this will be a movie someday, this will be a movie. Because... the things you heard are just incredible. Maybe it's like you say, maybe it's not Gilbert. What if you're just telling me a story and I don't know my head is spinning? Ruja knew that she was threatened by the United States. She also discovered from her own sources that Gilbert Armenta, her lover, was actually an informant and was an instrument of the US to capture her and bring her to the US and she wanted to turn this around and capture him and capture him. and use their contacts to end him in a miserable situation in Bulgaria.

Trust between us currently does not exist. You lied to me about so many things on a personal level. I think at this point we can see that Ruja was quite paranoid and rightly so. In 2017, police forces in ten different countries were investigating OneCoin for fraud. According to Europol documents delivered to the BBC. We obtained these documents from the Europol meetings on Operation Satellite, which was the coordinated investigation into OneCoin and Ruja. It is believed that these police documents were also leaked to Ruja Ignatova. Her network and her Bulgarian sources reported her as quickly as live. Ruja had good connections in Bulgaria with the intelligence

service

, with the prosecutor's office and with the police.

We knew from the beginning that he had ears everywhere, even in some law enforcement. She had ears and knew they were watching her, so we had to be careful. You have to be very careful, don't use face-to-face email or encrypted phones, nothing else is safe, believe me. I think we're going to be fine. During a phone call with Ruja in October 2017, Gilbert Armenta let slip that he was secretly working for the Americans. It was a slip of the tongue. It was definitely a slip of the tongue. He went off script, kind of like I'm just trying to keep these cops away from me, basically.

And then there was no goodbye or you're a bastard or I know whatYou are doing. It was just one click and it was gone. There is no trace. She hang up the phone. She never answered another call. Did she ever communicate with any of these people? Nothing. Did you never hear a voice again? No. That was it. After Gilbert confirmed that authorities were closing in, Ruja acted immediately. My relationship with OneCoin and with Ruja ended brutally on October 25, 2017, when from that day on Ruja stopped being seen and disappeared from the face of the earth. The last time anyone saw Ruja, she took a very early Ryanair flight from Sofia airport, traveled to Athens with a bodyguard, disembarked from the plane, told a bodyguard to return to Bulgaria, and left her there.

They had met her in Greece and she got into the back of a Porsche with about three big, burly men. And that was the last time anyone saw her. He was desperate to find out where Ruja was. She sent him emails every day, she wanted to know that she was safe and sound. She was constantly texting him saying, Ruja, where are you? Where are you? We need you. She never contacted me again. Within a week, she had both attorneys sitting in my office and we hired a private investigator to find her. They said there is no trace of her.

The question has always been: is she running away from investors? Is she running from the authorities? In my opinion, there is no doubt that she was fleeing from US authorities. Since Ruja's disappearance, more than 100 people have been arrested for her involvement in the OneCoin scam. And like Gilbert Armenta, some have been convicted of financial crimes. Ruja's former spy chief Frank Schneider is accused of fraud and money laundering and now faces extradition to the United States. Every day is more or less the same. I'm lucky to have a big place, but it's still a prison. I can't leave, I can't go shopping, I can't do anything.

I'm under total house arrest. They threaten me with 40 years in prison. I mean, given the forces arrayed against you, have you ever thought about running? No. That is simply not an option. I mean, where are you running to here in this world? You know, it's... How the hell could it... no? The fact that he was potentially facing the rest of his life in prison in the United States, so he was backed into a corner, I guess he felt it was in his best interest to talk to us. But he was allegedly involved in the fraud. And we can only deduce that he knows much more than what he told us.

But while he was under house arrest, Frank Schneider provided the BBC with documents detailing OneCoin's finances. Frank Schneider gave us a large number of quite significant documents. We had internal documents that showed transactions worth millions and millions of dollars. And if you look at who is behind those companies, there are very, very shady people. This is purely serious money trafficking. OneCoin wasn't just laundering victims' stolen money. He managed funds from a wide range of shell companies. Some in Great Britain. So some of the British companies that used to invest in OneCoin were linked to some pretty serious criminals, particularly taking money out of Russia and Ukraine.

For example, we see that there is an entity linked to the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who, you know, fled the country and allegedly stole billions of dollars. Another company is linked to a Ukrainian arms dealer. He has been involved in arms smuggling from North Korea to Iran. Because of these connections we've made between Ruja and other criminals, he really makes us wonder: is there a lot more to the story than we first thought? There were always some rumors that Ruja was involved in... some sort of criminal groups, but no one could really tell. Nobody really knew.

But then Frank told us that Ruja was really closely integrated within all of these organized crime groups. This happened in Dubai. He was more or less physically threatened, or at least there was a threat of a physical threat. He was approached by British boys who sat next to him in a cafe and then indicated that he would be receiving a request and that he had better follow it. Otherwise there would be consequences. It was a kind of blackmail and extortion of several tens of millions of dollars. Otherwise, there would be safety issues for her and her family.

They were... criminals. Gangsters. But who? Because you said you would identify them. Yes. No, I'm not going to tell you who, because I have a family, I have children and I have a wife. And also for security reasons. So I know this is very serious organized crime. The BBC believes it can identify the man who allegedly blackmailed Ruja Ignatova. And that person is Gary Murphy, a great British gangster. So Gary Murphy is a convicted drug dealer from Liverpool. He is a very feared man, someone who knows how the criminal world works. So the funny thing is that it seems like Gary Murphy first got involved through some kind of strange extortion attempt, but then he worked for OneCoin.

But he seems like a strange way to enter that world. UK court documents reveal that Gary Murphy went on to work as an enforcer for OneCoin. What is clear is that Gary Murphy was involved in different aspects of the fraud. Things like protection, things like chasing debt. Mr. Hampton, that trip to McDonald's on the way to work yesterday is really not good for his health. That means someone was following me. They took photos of me at a gas station with my wife drinking coffee. It was terrifying knowing that someone was following us. The situation worsened when the police told us to seek protection.

Christopher Hamilton is a British businessman. The United States has accused him of laundering $100 million for Ruja's boyfriend, Gilbert Armenta. The charges Hamilton denies. But OneCoin accuses Christopher Hamilton of trying to steal his money. One day he starts receiving mysterious messages saying: Hello, Mr. Hamilton, we need that money back. It's so creepy isn't it, having pictures... Let's go for this... This is the M4 motorway and the

service

station and it's not even next to your house. No, it's 100 miles from my house. So someone will be watching you all the way to take pictures of a US gas station.

It's pretty creepy. So we have been able to establish that Gary Murphy was orchestrating this attempted extortion of Christopher Hamilton for OneCoin. If this is not achieved, things will get worse. I assure. And then there are also photos of your family. And then you see a photo of your grandchildren. What we're really talking about is OneCoin, sending some organized criminal to monitor you, surveil you, and send you these threatening messages. The leaked Europol documents also link Ruja and OneCoin to another alleged organized crime figure. There's a mysterious name that keeps popping up everywhere. Online rumors. It has all these kinds of strange connections with OneCoin and Ruja.

And it's so confusing who this man really is. His name is simply Taki. His nickname is the Bulgarian cocaine king. Taki, appeared more than once. It wasn't like it was a one-time thing. That was a recurring theme. That name? -Yeah. -kept appearing. Yes. He was the head of whatever this drug trafficking organization was. Better known as Taki, Hristoforos Amanatidis is widely suspected of being a Bulgarian organized crime boss. But multiple police investigations into murder, armed robbery and drug trafficking have never led to a prosecution. Taki is a mysterious figure. At one point, Interpol pursued him on drug charges.

But we understand that that Interpol red notice is no longer active. So no one has ever accused him of anything. But he certainly is feared. And I'm thinking, why is this Taki character involved with OneCoin? Let's say that when you Google Hristoforos Nicos Amanatidis AKA Taki, you get some pretty strange results. Mainly blogs that, frankly, are full of nonsense. I would say the most striking is probably the joy he and his wife feel about the return of the great British Bake Off to the screens. It's great to see classic recipes like Victoria Sponge revived and embraced by a new generation of bakers.

It doesn't mean you can't be, you know, an alleged international drug dealer and also love the Great British Bake Off at the same time, that's possible. For me, my best guess is that this is just a fake blog. Someone has been paid to publish it. So the truth about him is that he's a little harder for people to find. We showed photographs of him to people who knew Ruja, who were close to her and who perhaps identified him. I'm 95% sure I've met that guy on several occasions. And he was one of her bodyguards. Well, the FBI does refer to an international drug trafficker who is in charge of Ruja's security.

And we understand that that is Taki. They told us that a supposedly important drug trafficker provides him with physical security. Was he a bodyguard? No, No. His people would have been his bodyguards. Why would a suspected drug trafficker be providing physical security to a woman in Bulgaria? Here, I'll give you security if you launder my money. So, you know, she's well protected. A source close to Ruja told the BBC that she may have paid Taki up to €100,000 a month for protection. As in most mafia environments, you have to buy yourself protection. Just like in the classic Chicago movies.

You have to buy yourself protection and the bigger it gets, the more dangerous it becomes. Listen, I have done a lot of investigations, but the most dangerous investigation in my professional history is the Ruja investigation. Journalist Dimitar Stoyanov has been investigating Ruja's relationship with the Bulgarian criminal world and now works alongside the BBC. Research is dangerous because many people want to bury the truth. I believe Ruja is a product of Taki's organization and, based on the evidence, played a key role in her life. Bulgaria is totally invaded by organized crime and the situation is desperate. Since becoming an investigative journalist, I have been attacked more than ten times and have had to leave the country at least four times.

Dimitar cannot prove Taki's involvement in organized crime, but through his underworld sources, he is convinced that Taki is a major player. him with close connections with Ruja. At this moment Taki is the “capo di tutti icapi”, he is the boss of the mafia. Taki is powerful enough to help anyone who wants to hide or disappear. From what I heard, he was very close to her. So there are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to Ruja and Taki's relationship. People say that they were very close, for example, that he was the godfather of her daughter.

The baptism of her daughter was a three-day spectacle. The first day was going to be a party on Ruja's yacht, taking a tour of the Black Sea. The second day was the baptism and Ruja's daughter was baptized on an island off the coast. Europol police documents and Bulgarian property records also reveal financial connections between Ruja and members of Taki's family. Ruja makes a really mysterious real estate deal with Taki's partner, where he buys a piece of land for nothing and sells it to Ruja for millions of dollars. And even Taki's brother-in-law also runs a company that has all these connections to OneCoin.

So there seems to be a financial relationship. Is it Ruja who is helping Taki get protection? Is it the fact that she is helping him move money? Clearly, there is something mutually beneficial happening here. So Taki seems to grow and grow and grow in this story. We don't know how Taki and Ruja met or if he was involved with OneCoin from the beginning. Taki is a ghost. You will never see it. You only hear about him. You will never talk to him. He is speaking to you through other people. You can't deliver a message. You will receive messages, if you don't listen, you disappear.

Either you are removed from office or you simply disappear from Earth. While a government minister, Ivan Hristanov investigated allegations that Taki oversaw a major criminal network sanctioned by corrupt officials. So when we talk about Taki, Taki is the mafia boss in Bulgaria. He is extremely powerful. The State, the political establishment and the mafia became one and the same. He became one body. Since Bulgaria is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, many experts claim that its mafia has a strong control over the political elite. After I started fighting with Taki, I was afraid to even get home and every time I thought, you know, trying to see if there was someone hiding behind the hallway.

It is evident that the Bulgarian agencies worked for this couple, Ruja and Taki. The only person who can protect her physically, but most importantly, protect her from all those investigations, including those from foreign agencies. It was Taki. Five years after Ruja Ignatova disappeared, the FBI asked the public for help. Today we announced that Ruja Ignatova, an international fugitive who allegedly masterminded a vast global fraud scheme, will be added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Ruja Ignatova, known as the

missing

Crypto Queen, has been accused of defrauding victims of more than 4 billionof dollars. Why is she on that list?

I mean, among the biggest criminals in the world, Osama bin Laden has been on that list. Is it because of a scam, a big scam, or is it because of the people she is associated with? The big criminals, the darker world that maybe she actually is a part of. Ignatova was always concerned about law enforcement and did her best to avoid detection. So, starting today, we are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to her arrest. Now there is some kind of global manhunt for this woman, and they contact me to say that I saw her in a bar in Athens.

I've seen her in a restaurant, it's definitely her. She's been seen in a hotel in the British Virgin Islands, she's on a yacht somewhere floating around the Mediterranean, we've seen her at a beach bar and every sighting turns out not to be her. Is the FBI still getting tips and leads? I know of two we performed in, but they turned out to be nothing. One completely out of the ordinary, another somewhat believable. Follow him. Nothing. It was just another bad lead. Nobody knows where she is. That's the whole story of this, it's like white collar crime combined with what you would think El Chapo or someone like that would do on steroids.

Even some of the world's biggest drug traffickers can't hide from authorities forever. We have no idea where it is. One of the last people who spoke to Ruja before her disappearance was her intelligence chief, Frank Schneider. I said, why do you have to go? You are safe in Bulgaria. Nothing will happen to you in Bulgaria. You are, you are protected. Why do you want to leave Bulgaria? And she said, I have to do it. There will be a police raid and my people want me out of the country. I have to do this. I do not have any other option.

The mere fact that the FBI can only say that she landed in Greece and we have no idea where she went after that point shows that there was serious planning. She was executed to perfection. I know that there was an exit strategy at least towards Greece. You can't achieve it at any time. That has to be in place. Who is the person you think would know that exit strategy? If I were a betting man, I think that person would be Frank Schneider. From the beginning of the story, many people describe Frank Schneider as the man behind the curtain, The Wizard of Oz.

He didn't trust Frank. He is a spy. He is skilled at deception. Law enforcement could come get me, but I couldn't tell them where he was because I don't know where he is. Let's say he lives the good life on some yacht in the Mediterranean. It's hard to do that with a profile like that. She is not the type who will live in the jungle and hunt for food. The five-star life she had before that lifestyle doesn't suit her disappearance. So I have a theory or a hypothesis that she is no longer

alive

. It is very difficult to disappear without a trace for so many years.

What if Dr. Ruja is really

dead

? I mean, it's possible. And if she's involved with all these serious organized criminals and who knows exactly what she's been up to, there are probably a lot of people who would want her gone. Whatever happened to Ruja, whether she went to some exotic destination or Taki was killed, probably had something to do with it. A criminal associate of Taki, known as Kuro, claimed to have information about Ruja's disappearance. Kuro told me that he heard Taki talk about her criminal business in front of Ruja. Kuro asked Taki why did you speak in front of Ruja?

Taki replied, don't worry, she is almost

dead

. She disappeared three or four days later. Kuro also obtained a report from the secret police and gave it to Dimitar. He alleged that Taki's brother-in-law had been heard talking about Ruja. According to the report, the brother-in-law was drunk and also distraught when he said that Ruja Ignatova had been murdered on a yacht in the Ionian Sea. According to the document, he said that Taki had Ruja murdered. Ruja was murdered on a yacht off Greece. His body was dismembered and thrown into the sea. I mean, if it's true and it was Taki who actually ordered Ruja's murder, it's horrible, no matter what she did.

And it would really change the tone of the story because the person who defrauded investors of billions, potentially herself, has become a victim. The key question is why Taki would kill her. Well, one possible answer is that she already knew too much. If you become a liability in the mafia, they will massacre you and throw you to sink to the bottom of the sea. And knowing how violent her cartels are, if he thought she was a threat to him and had access to her, he would 100% probably eliminate her. But do I know? No. But that would make sense.

If she's dead, I have to believe it's someone close to her who knew where her funds were or how to access her funds or where one of them was. While the billions Ruja Ignatova stole have not been recovered, property records and eyewitnesses suggest that Taki's associates now live in her Bulgarian mansions. Many of the properties that belonged to Ruja are currently being used by people related to Taki. Unfortunately, no body is not a crime. I can't be sure that Taki is responsible. for Ruja's murder, but I think it is a very possible version because the moment we received it and the people who were there found out, we became the target of threats and surveillance.

After publishing evidence that Taki had ordered Ruja's murder around 2018, death threats again forced Dimitar into hiding. I think Taki is a very dangerous man. I try not to be afraid, but in reality I have reasons to be afraid. Many people are very afraid. They know that something scary and frightening has happened in his neighborhood. Dimitar's source, Kuro, gave evidence to the CIA that Taki had ordered Ruja's murder, according to witnesses interviewed by the BBC. After the information was leaked, Kuro was murdered while living in South Africa. Development of the murder of four Bulgarians in the leafy suburb of Constantia: a couple, their housekeeper and a bodyguard were found with gunshot wounds to the head.

Kurow was brutally murdered. His home was raided in Cape Town, South Africa, and he was killed execution-style, along with his wife and people who worked for him. Certain people had to be eliminated because they knew too much about Taki. It was the kind of public execution that seemed more like a statement. Be careful who you deal with. In the last year, two other high-profile criminals in Bulgaria have been murdered and another has disappeared. Hello Dimitar, what happened? What is the new news? There has been another shooting in Bulgaria. Someone has been murdered in the street. Dimitar says that another gangster is hanging around Sofia. and what sounds like a murderer at 20 meters is just power... he has shot her in the head.

But what's scary is the idea that you could be walking down the street and suddenly get shot in the head. Thanks Dimitar, goodbye. Bye bye. In Bulgaria they kill people all the time. I don't even know how deep this all goes, so I don't even know how powerful these people really are and how far they would go to stop someone from exposing them. While experts believe these murders point to an ongoing dispute in the Bulgarian underworld, there is no direct evidence linking them to Taki. So, there is a line of executions and it is quite obvious to us that there is a massive cleanup operation in this mafia organized crime ecosystem.

It's hard to know if any of this has to do with Ruja or not. It is very brave to say that this clean-up operation is due to Ruja. It is very likely that Ruja is actually part of the cleanup operation. One of the people at the top of the list to be eliminated. Taki has never been arrested for claiming that he had Ruja Ignatova murdered. Bulgarian police say they do not have enough evidence. The BBC has discovered the sudden death of another criminal linked to OneCoin. Gary Murphy was involved in a quad bike accident. He fell off a cliff like many people in this story, not a good way to go.

The only thing that is clear from the story is that people end up in jail, end up dead, or disappear. And in a further twist, just a few months after our interview, Ruja's own spy chief joined the list. He got a call from someone saying that Frank Schneider is missing. What do you mean he disappeared? He left, what, they extradited him to the United States? No, he has disappeared. He has fled. Ruja's Mr. Fixer has done exactly the same as his former boss. He simply disappeared into thin air. Ruja Ignatova remains the most wanted woman in the world and the FBI is still searching for her.

In the years since her murder, several sightings have been reported. There was even a police raid in Greece, but nothing. No body has ever been found. Whether Ruja is dead or not, it is very difficult to be sure. Could be, this is just another brilliant ploy to throw everyone off. And I wouldn't put it past her to do that. But it is increasingly likely that she is actually dead. We are chasing a shadow. At some point, it looks like Elvis Presley might still be

alive

. Ruja may also be alive on some distant island, surrounded by small children.

It's really not very likely. She messed with the wrong guys.