Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions
on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this
podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb.
And I'm Shelby.
And this is episode number 55 of Dying to be Found.
If you are a new listener, thanks so much for tuning in.
And if you're a loyal listener, as always, thank you so much for hanging in with us.
Regardless of when you started listening, we really appreciate you being here, where
I like to say DB2F is a family thing.
So yep, I have Shelby here today.
She is my daughter, and we're going to take on a special case that is open to interpretation.
We don't always talk about those high profile cases, but we do always talk about true crime.
So I hope you are liking this new format that we have out this season.
If you have something you want to hear, take a look at our show notes for more information
on how to contact us and consider buying us a coffee to help support the show.
Because Shelby, you and I just had this conversation.
We do love our coffee.
We sure do.
And it would be wonderful if I had my coffee for today.
Yep, we're doing an early morning record and Shelby told me to give her 10 minutes because
she was brewing some coffee.
But yeah, how's that working out for you?
Not well.
We took a quick trip to the beach and the coffee maker's not working.
So I shall have coffee soon.
Good for you.
I've, oh, I'm using, I don't know if you even noticed this, what cup I'm using this morning.
Do you remember this one?
Oh yes, I got that from the Christian bookstore.
Yeah.
Shelby got me this amazing cup.
I love that cup.
Yeah, I love it too.
It's my favorite cup.
And it's not just because you gave it to me.
It's literally my favorite cup because it holds two Keurig cups.
It's the only one in the house that does that.
So really?
Yeah.
All right.
I was thinking about you when I put the storyline together, Shelbs, because you work in finance
and I think you have the mind of an investor.
Anytime we have conversations on the stock market, you really, really know your stuff.
So sometimes you give me advice on what I should be investing in.
So I wanted to ask your thoughts on cryptocurrency.
I honestly wish that I got into that a little early in the game.
At this moment in time, it's not something that I would personally invest in.
That's totally just me.
But I had a Bitcoin, for example.
I don't even know what they're up to at this time.
I'm not a huge fan, but I'm not going to push it off, if that makes sense.
Right now is just not the time for me that I would like to invest in it.
Why not?
Well, I do have the grayscale Bitcoin trust.
So it's like a very minuscule version of Bitcoin and it's not doing so hot right now.
Okay.
Well, Bitcoin is doing pretty hot because do you have $23,052 laying around to buy a
share?
Absolutely not.
Me neither.
Have you heard of one coin?
No, I have not.
Okay.
Well, that's what we're talking about today.
And we're going to be talking about a story of a fugitive that authorities at this very
moment, Shelby, are dying to find.
This is a story of Ruzsa Plemenova Ignitova, a well-established law student who attended
Oxford University on her way to success.
However, she chose to initiate one of the largest Ponzi schemes involving cryptocurrency
ever documented in the United States.
Does Ignitova have a criminal mind?
Yes, but not in the sense of what you're used to when listening to true crime podcasts like
ours.
And back in 2014, Shelby, Ignitova was accused of laundering 104 million US dollars.
Your eyeballs are getting big.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yep.
104 million US dollars through a crypto Ponzi scheme using that company I had mentioned
called OneCoin, which is supposedly similar to what we know as Bitcoin.
You had just mentioned you hadn't heard of it.
You know what a Ponzi scheme is, right?
Yes.
Yep.
Do you want to tell our listeners or?
That was the guy, wasn't it?
It was.
It was the guy.
Do you want to?
I had a little teachable moment to tell our listeners about the Ponzi scheme, but of course
I'll have one at the end here because it's all about educating people.
And this one I think is really important because I just did a financial literacy workshop recently,
and this is something that's not always taught at home.
Did you want to tell people what a Ponzi scheme is?
I can give the history of it, but do you want to just give a little bit of feedback on what
it is?
Paying investors with money that comes from new investors and investment.
Exactly.
So basically they are paying others on borrowed money that doesn't really 100% exist.
Well, I wanted to give you the history of the Ponzi scheme.
So yeah, we're going to talk about that guy.
It was Charles Ponzi.
Charles Ponzi is given credit for creating a major scheme back in 1920.
And this scheme was so large that Charles Dickens even wrote two novels about it.
I did not know that.
That's cool.
Wow.
No, I didn't know that either.
So Charles Dickens targeted the United States Postal Service or USPS.
And during that era, the USPS allowed people like you and me to pre-purchase postage coupons
and send it to whomever we wanted to in the mail.
Let's say I'm going to pre-purchase some postage coupons for you, Shelby.
I'm going to mail those to you.
And when you receive them, you're going to take them to the post office and exchange
these coupons for postage stamps.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Yes.
Well, old Ponzi got a little greedy and began promising a 50% return on these coupon investments
to people like you and me.
Or he really said that you could make a 100% return in 90 days.
Wow.
I know, right?
I mean, that sounds amazing.
Of course, people are thinking cha-ching.
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, it's really enticing.
But instead of taking his investors' funds and investing those in the USPS prepaid coupons,
Charles Ponzi took that money, got new investors to jump on board, and paid his original investors
with that money, with that new money, with the money that didn't exist, borrowed money,
however you want to say it.
Ironically, Shelby, I don't know if you even knew this, the name of Ponzi's company that
he had for this scheme was called the Securities Exchange Company.
Are you familiar?
AKA the SEC.
Yeah.
That came later because of this incident here.
Absolutely.
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 was established to oversee securities transactions similar
to what occurred back in the 1920 Ponzi schemes, which guaranteed a more accurate and transparent
accounting of public investments.
Shelves, I'm going to say this is pretty much what you do every day when you manage accounts.
Yes, there are some advisors that we do help in regards to compliance for the SEC.
Some of our advisors are not.
It's interesting because I just learned this maybe a year or two ago, where some of our
advisors are not large enough to actually have to register with the SEC directly.
So they're just registering by the state.
But yes, in regards to those compliance laws, we do help a lot of our advisors with certain
things that do pertain to making sure the advisor is doing everything that they're supposed
to and they're really starting to crack down just on simple things like rolling over accounts
and whatnot.
That's a new law that actually just came into play last year.
Yeah, it's interesting for sure.
I remember when you got your degree and I don't even know if you remember what I said
to you.
You said that you had to be really, really careful because you will be working with money
and when people work with money, they get greedy.
I do remember saying that.
Yeah, I remember you saying that.
Absolutely.
So there's a lot of accountability because people, I mean, it's human nature, I suppose,
but you can honestly get yourself in a lot of trouble, especially if you have a big responsibility
with those accounts.
So I wanted to talk about cryptocurrency.
Of course, we have this new form of what we will say is currency that's 100% digitally
managed and Shelby, I listened to a really good podcast and I don't remember what it
was, but it was talking about the dark web.
This was several months ago, but they actually had an episode on Bitcoin and how it's used.
So to me, it's a little complicated, I don't fully trust it and I don't know why.
I mean, I just looked it up to see how much Bitcoin is worth.
Obviously, $23,000 per share.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Me personally, I don't know enough about it, so I'm not going to say that it's sketchy
or anything like that, but I'm hesitant to ever invest in Bitcoin.
What is his name?
Mark?
He owns Mavericks?
Yeah, the Mavericks.
You mean from Shark Tank?
Yes, he is like the last I remember.
He is huge into Bitcoin or was it's Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's cool.
Well, you know, I mean, he's a savvy guy, so he's going to know more than me on this
topic.
Yeah.
Oh, right.
I'm going to piece for it.
Maybe we should rethink our stance on this.
Maybe.
Yeah.
He also has financial advisors.
I'm sure he pays to monitor all that.
Yeah, very true.
According to Investopedia, cryptocurrency is a digital currency that holds a high level
of encryptions that makes it virtually impossible to counterfeit or double spend.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Because it operates under a digital system, cryptocurrency requires the use of many, many
computers that are linked to a peer to peer network, creating a blockchain of information
where the computer records accurate transactions documented by timestamps in transactional
movement.
So I want you to think of a grid, Shelby, which is kind of sectioned off.
I mean, I know that you can see all those little numbers, all those green numbers going
through your mind right now, but block those off in a grid, kind of like what we're looking
at each other on our platform today.
So let's multiply that by hundreds of thousands.
So you've got a grid and everything is sectioned off into blocks, just like you would see on
a map that I know that you're going to read one day.
And cryptocurrency would be easy to read and analyze because you can go specifically to
a certain block if you want to identify something.
And that's what block chaining is all about.
It would require a ton of computer generated space, kind of like the old days when computers
were huge.
They had big rooms of all these computers that were probably put on different shelves.
So computer after computer after computer.
And Shelby, the podcast that I listened to specifically said that people who manage cryptocurrency
have big warehouses of nothing but computers upon computers upon computers that have to
be managed, monitored.
It's really, really a big thing.
I mean, that makes sense as to why it's so expensive because I mean, it probably costs
thousands of dollars to keep the...
What's the word I'm looking for?
Like to upkeep the computer systems, to pay the people that are watching, operating.
Yeah, exactly.
That makes sense as to why they're so dang expensive.
Absolutely.
Well, we're going to go into the crypto queen here who is named Ruzsa Ignitova.
She was born on May 30th, 1980.
That's a great day, isn't it?
It is.
That's your birthday.
It is my birthday.
She was born to an engineer and a teacher in Ruz, Bulgaria and moved to Germany when
she was 10 years old.
Growing up, Ignitova always dreamed of being rich and was always reading books on how to
make money.
Not a bad thing.
I mean, what was that book I gave you?
It was Rich Dad, Poor Dad?
Yes.
I was just thinking of that book too.
Yeah.
Always good to kind of get ahead because nobody wants to struggle financially for their entire
life.
Absolutely.
No, definitely not.
Ignitova studied European law at Oxford University and was fluent in four languages, including
Russian, German, English and Bulgarian.
She is considered someone with high intelligence and was so good at public speaking that she
often attended conferences to speak to investors.
In 2014, at one of these conferences, she began convincing conference goers to invest
in her company called OneCoin.
This would be in competition with Bitcoin.
Back in 2014, Ignitova and her business partner, Carl Sebastian Greenwood founded the company
called OneCoin.
But the difference between that and Bitcoin, Shelby, is that OneCoin was never mined through
those computers like Bitcoin is and there's no public information given to investors on
how this cryptocurrency would be managed.
So she talked the talk.
She had really good words, very convincing, but didn't have any portfolios to back it
up.
Wow.
That would be a red flag immediately.
Mm hmm.
Ignitova and her partner simply told investors that OneCoin would kill Bitcoin.
And this is why you should invest.
She professed herself in 2014 to be crypto queen and promised investors a large return
with little to no risk.
Now Ignitova and her partner convinced around 1 million investors from 175 countries to
spend all of their time and energy looking for people like you and me to invest.
Wow.
So like a pyramid scheme, right?
Right.
Mm hmm.
So in 2016, Ignitova and Greenwood would go on to create what we know is that Ponzi scheme
targeting Bitcoin.
Besides this Ponzi scheme, Ignitova marketed OneCoin heavily and convinced investors unfamiliar
with cryptocurrency to buy into OneCoin.
She would be targeting people like you and me, Shelby, because we don't really know much
about it.
Right.
Wow.
She said that she would have them sell investment packages to their friends and family.
Basically she targeted investors unfamiliar with Bitcoin, which is really easy to do.
It's relatively still, even though it's making a ton of money on the stock market, Shelby,
it's still a new concept and there's just not enough information or relevance right
now in the financial world.
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but do you manage crypto coin through your accounts?
Bitcoin?
Yeah.
Do you manage Bitcoin or cryptocurrency?
I do not.
The platforms that I work with do not allow for the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.
So I'd be interested to come across an advisor that might.
All right.
So obviously we have a lot going on here.
Ignitova is getting her investors to get other people to invest, creating that pyramid.
And she's paying her older investors with the new investors money in the whole scheme
of things.
No pun intended.
Ignitova was a really good salesperson and knew how to be convincing.
Ignitova made claims that one coin was backed by a reputable blockchain company, which according
to US news provides security and transparency in the cryptocurrency market.
So she's saying that her company is being backed by a reputable company because that
blockchain, I mean, somebody's got to manage the blockchain, right?
She simply made up a price for her one coin investors, which was never regulated.
She never publicly registered or traded one coin on the stock exchange.
You've never heard of it.
I've never heard of it.
Obviously she successfully marketed one coin on a fabricated platform.
She successfully sold her ideas to the public and get this Shelby, she made off with $4
billion of investors money from around the world.
What do you think of that?
Wow.
That's crazy.
It is.
Yeah.
Well, obviously when we have a good thing going for us, you know, it's going to come
to an end at some point in time.
It's got to, right?
That's right.
What is that?
Murphy's law?
Yeah.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Yes.
And things started to go wrong by 2016.
One coin began losing traction with investors as they began finding it difficult to sell
off one coin or even recoup their money on their investments.
So this would be around the time that I think that investors are starting to say, wait a
minute, something's fishy here.
In the marketing world, this represents a decline in a product's life cycle.
You always have to be looking at that product to find new ways to keep it alive.
Otherwise it's just going to go downhill.
Investors did start getting antsy and yeah, they began figuring out that, wait a minute,
I think I'm being scammed here.
Also Shelby, by this time in 2016, news media outlets began investigating one coin and this
is the beginning of the end for Ruzsa Ignitova.
Wow.
She had a good run.
Yeah.
She did have a good run because she started all this back in 2014.
So even for two years, I mean, she made off with four billion.
Yeah.
Four billion dollars.
That's a ton of money.
It is in just two years.
I have to say, yeah, she targeted the right people for this.
She sure did.
I mean, she was going to all these conferences and you've got large audiences when there
are those big conferences.
Well, on March 15, 2017, several federal agencies met to discuss one coin and its owners, which
would be Ruzsa Ignitova and Carl Greenwood.
These agencies included the New York District Attorney, the US Department of Justice, the
FBI, and representatives from the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Dubai, and Bulgaria.
So obviously Shelby, by March of 2017, things are getting really serious here.
Absolutely.
That's, I mean, a ton of different federal agencies.
So to have that number, definitely pretty serious.
Ignitova was formally charged in absentia in America, at least in 2019 for wire and
securities fraud, plus conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The FBI announced a 100,000 reward for any information to Ignitova's arrest.
Ultimately, Shelby, this self-professed crypto queen, Ruzsa Ignitova, certainly reached celebrity
status when she was placed on the FBI's most wanted list in 2017.
She is only the 11th woman to be placed on this list.
Can you believe that?
Wow, that's crazy.
I can't believe that I haven't heard of this.
I mean, this was what, six years ago?
So and to this day, she's on the run.
According to CNN, by October 2017, Ignitova was charged in the United States with one
count each of wire fraud.
Word is that Ignitova was tipped off that the feds were closing in and she set a plant
in motion to flee the country.
Wow, that's crazy.
On October 25th, 2017, Ignitova was last seen boarding a plane from Bulgaria to Greece,
leaving behind her business partner, Carl Green, and her brother, Konstantin, who eventually
Shelby took the fall for the whole one coin, everything.
And no worries because she had stashed approximately $500 million in her suitcase for her trip.
Wow.
I know.
Plus the $4 billion in cryptocurrency?
No, I'm thinking that she had to leave that behind, but she was able to carry $500 million
in cash with her.
There'll be their timestamps and just all sorts of thumb prints on cryptocurrency.
There's no way she would be able to make any transactions in her name and not get caught.
Huh.
Well, that just seems like a waste of a few years for her then.
Yes.
Well in July 2018, Carl Greenwood was arrested in his home in Thailand and was extradited
to the United States where he pleaded guilty in connection to commit wire fraud and conspiracy
to launder money.
So he was ultimately taken down for this whole thing.
But let me just mention a little bit about Ruzsa's brother, Konstantin.
When Ruzsa disappeared in 2017, Konstantin took over OneCoin Affairs.
She basically said, Hey, I'm leaving.
You take care of things.
I'll catch up with you later.
In March of 2019, Konstantin was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport as
he was boarding a flight to Bulgaria after a business trip to the United States.
Talk about embarrassing, eh?
Yeah, for sure.
He pleaded guilty to multiple felonies, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering
and fraud and is currently free on bond while awaiting his sentences.
By the time this airs, he may have gone to trial, but as of the day we're recording here,
there's no news on what direction that's taking yet.
Konstantin states that his sister communicated an exit strategy to him all the way back to
2014 when they first started OneCoin.
Wow.
So she had a plan from the very beginning and Konstantin was instructed to take the
money and run and blame someone else on the way out.
How about that?
Wow.
If she had a plan to an exit plan from the very beginning, that just goes to show, you
know, she knew what she was doing.
She knew what she was doing was wrong.
Why would you create an exit plan for something you're so sure of working out in the beginning?
You know, that just doesn't make any sense to me.
Absolutely.
You know, she was of high intelligence and normally crooks are for the most part.
No, crooks are stupid.
People to this capacity, people at this level definitely have high, high intelligence.
Absolutely.
So let's give a little bit of information on Ruzsa.
Ignitova, just in case any of our listeners run into someone who fits her description.
Shelby, she's gorgeous.
She's just gorgeous.
When last seen in 2017, she had brown hair and brown eyes.
I mean, obviously she could dye her hair.
She could put contacts in.
Court records reflect that she is accustomed to living a life of luxury and made major
investments in real estate in Belgrade, Serbia, horse racing in Abu Dhabi and an oil field
in Madagascar.
So she's still active.
I don't know how she's getting around that.
She may be under obviously an assumed name, right?
Right.
Ignitova is believed to be traveling with armed guards and as of July 4th, 2022, it's
believed that she may have had cosmetic surgery to alter her appearance.
Wow.
She speaks German, English and Bulgarian and has ties to Bulgaria, Germany, Russia, Greece
and the United Arab Emirates.
If she is ever caught, Ignitova faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted.
So what do you think so far?
Is this nuts or what?
I have no idea.
As of January 29th, 2023, I'm about to throw a real twist into this case because Ignitova
went off the grid for what did we say?
Six years?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I found an article in Business Insider that was dated January 29th, 2023, so it's not
even that long ago.
It is said that Ignitova has a property listing in the UK and it's pretty solid that this
property is linked to Ruzsa.
So there is a little bit of movement out there, Shelby.
I just think that she made a mistake.
You can't stay gone long, right?
You can't stay gone forever.
Right.
According to a lead taken from this investigation, Ignitova had purchased a penthouse in London,
England on November 4th, 2021 under some business name.
The thing about that, Shelbs, is that there are new transparency laws put into effect
as of 2023 and you're nodding your head.
Is this what you were talking about earlier with transparency?
No, a part of it, but I'm seeing a huge change with these different financial platforms where
my company used to be able to be the name on the account that our advisors are registering
with us, are registering us for, but that is no longer allowed.
They need a singular person.
They typically need our social security number.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
They attach the same thing.
And back in 2021, Ruzsa, she was forced to be named as the company's beneficiary.
She had to put her name on there.
I guess my question here is Shelbs, if she has been in hiding for six years and put her
real name down, why would she not have gone under an assumed name?
Surely she had contacts to make that fake identity.
You know what direction I'm going here?
I do.
It just makes no sense that she would have put her real name.
Apparently the name that the flat was listed under is a real corporation, but they declined
interviews.
Obviously they didn't want to discuss transaction related to the crypto queen.
Regardless, if a UK property does not have a beneficiary listed, sales can no longer
go through due to that transparency law.
So everything comes to a standstill until you get that beneficiary.
Yeah, that's interesting.
According to Entrepreneur Magazine, a lawsuit was filed by the victims against OneCoin and
court documents revealed that Ruzsa Ignatova has that $500 million stashed away in bank
accounts located in Dubai as of 2021.
She definitely has enough money to stay hidden as long as that sale from the London flat
does not come back to bite her.
Yeah, for sure.
All right.
When I first looked this story up, I told you that we had some pretty recent updates
on that real estate activity.
But since February 22nd, 2023, there's even more articles starting to pop up, Shelby,
about Ignatova.
I looked this up just last night to see if there were any updates because it's an active
case.
And I'm not going to say that there's a lot of substance to this because it's not on the
major news outlets yet.
It's in all those cryptocurrency magazines or websites.
There is rumor that Ignatova was assassinated by a drug lord that may have invested money
in OneCoin.
I did not see that coming at all.
Really?
No, wow.
I know.
Well, I mean, again, there's no substance to that yet.
We will find out.
But just from what I read yesterday is a possibility.
I have no idea.
We'll see how this pans out in the end, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
Oh my gosh.
Well, Shelby, that's the story of Ruzsa Ignatova, aka the crypto queen.
Well, that was a really good one.
Yeah.
Do you still want to go out and invest in Bitcoin?
No.
I thought that was a good one.
I thought you'd really enjoy this.
I did.
Do you have a teachable moment for us today?
Of course I do.
You absolutely need to do your own homework before ever entrusting your money in new or
old companies.
And Shelby, that includes your financial investors as well.
You need to know their background.
You need to do a little bit of homework on them.
They can say that they can help you, but again, when you're working with money, people can
get greedy.
And you know that playing the stock market is risky, and some companies are riskier than
others.
There's those different tiers that we invest in.
Are we going to go strong and aggressive, or are we just going to kind of do some easy
investing?
It's all up to you, but you just need to do your homework.
Honestly, to me, there's still not enough information about cryptocurrency and how it's
regulated in order for me to even consider investing in that company.
I would gauge it.
I would consider it maybe later in the future once I see how things work out.
There are still entirely too many ways to become a victim of fraud these days.
If it sounds too good to be true, we know that it is too good to be true.
Unless you are exceptional with analyzing market trends and potential investments, you
need a financial advisor to help you make those decisions because they will affect you
in the long run.
And I've heard too many stories of elderly people being swindled, which is honestly,
show me this.
That's one of the most disgusting acts that I can think of.
But we can do our due diligence to pay attention to where our money is going, ask questions,
seek advice, and just say no if something does sound a little bit too good to be true.
So that's my teachable moment.
Apply and verify your verifications before you invest in your life savings.
Well, thank you.
That was great.
Yeah, no problem.
All right, you all.
That again is the case of Ruzsa Ignitova.
We would love to hear what our listeners have to say about this case.
If you have any information concerning Ignitova, please contact your local FBI office or the
nearest American embassy or consulate.
There you have it until next week.
We'll talk to you soon.
Bye.
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