In September 2019, the BBC told the story of a woman named Ruja Ignatova.
Her name is on the FBI's wanted list after she defrauded private investors of $4.5 billion by promising them unprecedented profits from a new cryptocurrency. Having received this money, she literally disappeared into thin air.
The BBC documentary team from the BBC Eye Investigations series and journalists from the Panorama program tried to find out what happened to Ruža Ignatova. They looked into her close ties to a man believed to be one of the top bosses in Bulgarian organized crime and tried to verify the theory that she was brutally murdered. Did Ignatova manage to enjoy the stolen billions, or did she fall victim to the very people she hired as her security?
Ruja Ignatova was born in Bulgaria but grew up in Germany. She graduated from Oxford University and had a successful career in the financial sector before launching a new cryptocurrency, OneCoin, in 2014.
She managed to convince millions of people around the world to invest in the new cryptocurrency, promising them huge profits similar to those received by the first investors in Bitcoin.
In reality, Ignatova, known as Dr. Ruzha, organized a cleverly disguised financial fraud. Legitimate cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin rely on digital records, which OneCoin simply did not have.
In September 2017, when investigators from Germany and the United States began to take a close interest in Ignatova, she took off on an early morning Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens. After which no one ever saw her again.
Throughout the past year, BBC journalists tried to find out what happened to her, and most importantly, was she alive?
The main key to this investigation was the study of her immediate environment.
Richard Reinhard, who began the investigation into the OneCoin fraud, which was jointly conducted by the US Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, told the BBC about one of the main people from Ignatova’s circle, whose name was not previously disclosed.
According to information obtained by the BBC, the person in question is Christoforos Nikos Amantides, commonly known as Taki, who was tasked with ensuring the security of Ruja Ignatova.
“We were told that a major drug trafficker was responsible for her physical safety,” Reinhardt told the BBC in his first interview since he retired at the end of 2023. — The name Taki appeared more than once. This was not an isolated incident, but a recurring theme.”
The information was consistent with what the BBC had previously learned: US government lawyers said in 2019 that Ignatova's head of security was a major figure in Bulgarian organized crime, but did not name him.
“We have evidence that a very significant, and perhaps the most successful drug trafficker in Bulgarian history, was closely associated with OneCoin and served as [Ruja Ignatova’s] personal security guard,” one US Justice Department official said at the time.
This was the same “chief of security” who, as another US government lawyer had said in court a day earlier, was “involved in the disappearance” of Ignatova.
Reinhard also noted that most people have no idea what a sophisticated criminal Ruja Ignatova was: “Imagine white-collar crime coupled with drug trafficking and mafia operations.”
This version also seems to be confirmed by leaked Europol documents seen by BBC journalists, according to which Bulgarian police established a connection between Ignatova and Taki back in 2017, that is, before her disappearance.
These documents state that police suspected Taki of using the OneCoin financial network to launder proceeds from drug trafficking.
In his native Bulgaria, Taki has an almost mythical reputation, similar to that of El Chapo, or Pablo Escobar.
Many suspect him of being the head of Bulgarian organized crime and an active drug trafficker. In Bulgaria, he and his accomplices were the subject of investigations on suspicion of armed robbery, drug smuggling and murder, but Taki himself was never brought to justice.
“Taki is the head of the Bulgarian mafia and a very powerful man,” said former Bulgarian Deputy Agriculture Minister Ivan Christanov, who in 2022 investigated allegations that Taki ran a criminal network with the help of corrupt officials. He himself has no doubt about the veracity of such accusations. - Yes, it’s a ghost. It is impossible to see. You only hear about him. He even talks to people not directly, but through intermediaries. But if you don’t do as he wants, then you will simply disappear from the face of the earth.”
“Taki was the only person who could protect her [Ignatova] from all these investigations, including from foreign agencies,” noted Khristanov.
The BBC sent a request to the Bulgarian government about the allegations against corrupt officials, but received no response. The Sofia prosecutor’s office stated that “it does not cover up the crimes, as well as the persons who could have committed them.”
Taki is now believed to be living in Dubai, where Ignatova bought a luxury penthouse and where her bank accounts received tens of millions of dollars as a result of the OneCoin scam.
It is currently unknown how exactly Taki and Ruja Ignatova met, and whether he was involved with OneCoin from the very beginning, however, many sources claim that they had a close personal relationship and that he is the godfather of her daughter.
One person close to Ignatova in Bulgaria told the BBC she may have paid Taki up to €100,000 a month for her defence.
In addition, it appears that Ignatova and Taki had other financial relationships.
For example, Europol documents mention a complex transaction for the sale of a plot of land on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, which connects one of Ignatova’s companies with Taki’s wife.
The BBC obtained secret police documents from Frank Schneider, a former informant and adviser to Ignatova.
He told the BBC that his former boss worked with “crooks” and “gangsters”.
The BBC spoke to Schneider at his home in France, where he was under house arrest awaiting extradition to the US on charges of fraud involving the cryptocurrency OneCoin. However, he refused to name any names.
“I won’t tell you who we are talking about because I have a family... This is real serious organized crime,” he said.
It is possible that in the end Ignatova’s guard attacked her himself.
In 2022, Bulgarian journalist Dimitar Stoyanov and his colleagues at the investigative news outlet Bird.bg received a police report that was found in the home of a murdered Bulgarian policeman.
In the document, a police informant details how he overheard Taki's brother-in-law drunkenly say that Ignatova was killed on Taki's orders in late 2018 and her body was dismembered and thrown from a yacht into the Ionian Sea. According to Stoyanov, such a course of events is “very, very possible.”
Stoyanov also says that the authenticity of the document they received was confirmed by Bulgarian officials, not to mention the fact that Taki's numerous criminal associates also believe that he really killed her.
The BBC was unable to obtain independent confirmation of the validity of these claims.
Taki's associates said Ignatova became a liability to him because he wanted to eliminate evidence of his ties to the OneCoin cryptocurrency scam.
These include, for example, Krasimir Kamenov, known as Kuro, who for some time was on the Interpol list on murder charges.
According to Stoyanov, Kuro told him that he witnessed Taki discussing his criminal affairs in the presence of Ignatova. But when Kuro asked Taki if it was wise to trust her with such secrets, he replied: “Don’t worry, she’s almost dead already.”
Kuro also claimed that he spoke with the CIA about Taki, including regarding suspicions that he allegedly ordered the murder of Ruzha Ignatova. Sources close to Kuro confirmed to the BBC that his meeting with the CIA took place in late 2022.
In May 2023, Kuro and his wife were killed in their home in Cape Town. In addition to them, two more people working for Kuro were killed. South African police are still searching for the killers, but former Bulgarian Deputy Agriculture Minister Khristanov believes the deaths are linked to Taki.
“Some people had to be eliminated because they knew too much about Taki. It was a kind of public execution, more like a warning, like, be careful with those you deal with,” Khristanov said in an interview with the BBC.
Journalist Dimitar Stoyanov said he and his colleagues received death threats following the publication of [Taki}'s murder charges against Ignatova, forcing him to temporarily leave Bulgaria for the fourth time in his career.
Stoyanov does not say that he does not know the specific motive for the alleged murder, but property records, as well as eyewitness accounts, confirm that since the disappearance of Ruzha Ignatova, some of her properties in Bulgaria have been used by people associated with Taki.
Taki was never arrested on charges of murdering Ignatova. Her body was never found and investigators say they don't have enough evidence to bring him to justice.
However, former IRS investigator Richard Reinhardt believes Ignatova is likely dead. He also does not have any evidence that would link her death to Taki, but he believes that this course of events is consistent with how drug cartels operate.
“There is no honor among thieves... knowing how brutal the cartels are, if [Taki] decided she was a threat to him... he probably would have eliminated her rather than get caught,” he said.
The BBC wrote to Taki's lawyers asking them to clarify the allegations surrounding Ignatova's disappearance, but received no response.
In 2022, Ignatova was placed on the top ten list of the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives, where her name remains to this day.
The BBC team behind The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast received various reports and information about Ignatova's whereabouts after her alleged murder occurred, including details of a botched police operation in Greece in 2022 targeting which was her arrest.
Perhaps the rumors of her death are nothing more than another brilliant maneuver designed to throw everyone off the scent.
If so, it will likely become increasingly difficult for her to evade justice as the years go by. However, Khristanov believes that this is unlikely.
Whereas Reinhardt says the FBI "doesn't keep people in the top ten of its list for fun."
The names of wanted criminals are removed from it only if there is “compelling evidence” of their death. And given the circumstances of the disappearance of Ruzha Ignatova, such evidence may never appear at all.
All this means that today the missing “crypto queen” remains a woman who is still being hunted.
