
Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished - lnguyen
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-50435014
======
bitL
My bet is she was a front for some Eastern EU or EEU mafia group and now rests
in a concrete-filled barrel at the bottom of Black Sea, with all the money
taking multiple round trips through off-shore banks, never to be found by
their MLM "investors" again.

~~~
xwdv
Was my thought as well. It’s a shame they killed her off, she seemed like a
nice woman despite it all. Who knows if that kind of life was even worth it.
Seems like by the time you find out, you’re already in too deep and have to
keep going.

~~~
thu2111
You don't actually know she's dead. "Disappeared" can mean a lot of different
things, depending a lot on how hard people looked and the assumptions they
made.

~~~
jacquesm
With the number of enemies made, the fact that she stands out and the fact
that she knows a lot about the higher ups the chances of her walking around
free are rather low, and the chances of her sleeping with the fishes probably
better than even. How she ever thought she would walk away from this all scot-
free is a mystery to me.

~~~
Klinky
This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. The article
speculates she's alive. The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds,
so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what
she as doing and has family connections.

Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. Is this a way of saying
she's not white? That's not really a problem. In a ton of EMEA countries she'd
blend right in.

~~~
jacquesm
> This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies.

People get killed for _far_ less.

> The article speculates she's alive.

And I'm speculating she isn't.

> The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her
> as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has
> family connections.

I never said she did not know what she was doing.

> Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means.

It means that there are _tons_ of photographs of her and she may blend in in
some places but even there a little bit of reward money will almost certainly
turn her up unless she goes full Osama bin Laden and we all know how that
ended. True, he had more powerful enemies but she also has less powerful
friends than whole nations willing to help hiding her.

Hence my speculation she's no longer around.

~~~
justliest
> People get killed for far less.

Sincerely though, if not pop culture, what is this prediction based on?

What base rate information do you have about criminals who are extrajudicially
executed? What information about who in the criminal underworld knows how much
are you conditioning on in order to get a distribution that integrates out to
>0.5 here, as opposed to >0.9, or <0.1?

Just based on what’s publicly accessible, it seems totally implausible even to
put a educated guess on the odds of something like this.

~~~
jacquesm
I have - or rather had - a cousin who got a bullet in the back of his head
courtesy of his best friend for less than $100K. So my base rate may be a bit
higher than average but it definitely isn't zero and we're talking very large
amounts of money here.

Let's turn that around: how many hard core criminals do you know that end up
living to a ripe old age? Even Bulger didn't make it and he tried real hard.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-46036058](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46036058)

~~~
Klinky
People get shot over things that amount to less than a minimum wage paycheck,
that doesn't mean she is dead. Your example of Bulger is bad, he was 89 at the
time of his death, that's 10 years older than the avg European male's
lifespan. If John McAfee's still alive, she could also still be alive.

~~~
jacquesm
> People get shot over things that amount to less than a minimum wage
> paycheck, that doesn't mean she is dead.

No, just that there is a fair chance.

> Your example of Bulger is bad, he was 89 at the time of his death, that's 10
> years older than the avg European male's lifespan.

My point was: and yet he didn't make it. His end wasn't exactly peaceful by
any stretch of the imagination and he was an outlier for living that long. He
only managed because he laid low for a long time (16 years!), if not for that
he'd have been killed in the same manner or worse long before.

Bulger is a bad example for only one reason: he turned information on the
Mafia over to the authorities, which is a bit of a career limiting move for a
criminal. Note that between his arrival in the penitentiary where he was
murdered and his demise only a scant few hours passed.

But still, as you correctly state, he lived to 89, which is older than most
and that's why he's exceptional, a hardened criminal, former gang leader able
to live to that age is noteworthy.

~~~
Klinky
We agree she could be dead or end up dead over this, but that could be said
for any criminal scammer. Madoff isn't dead, and he ran the biggest scam in
the world.

There is nothing unique about this case, or any specific piece of evidence you
can point to that indicates her death, other than a hunch. Bulger lasted 16
years laying low, why not her?

~~~
raincom
Based on court documents, Ruja left to Athens, where she was accompanied by
Russians. Now it is anyone's guess.

------
imglorp
The parent scam company, OneLife, still has a webpage up:
[https://www.onelife.eu/en](https://www.onelife.eu/en) however its official
denial of OneCoin wrong-doing is a 503.

Fortunately, that denial, a glorious work on its own, can be seen in cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.onelife.eu/en/news/corporate-
announcement)

~~~
pookeh
Seems to work for me [https://www.onelife.eu/en/news/corporate-
announcement](https://www.onelife.eu/en/news/corporate-announcement)

~~~
NilsIRL
Works for me as well

------
johnpowell
I torrent a lot of TV shows. And American Greed popped up a lot. I always
dismissed the show until they they recently did a ep on the Fyre festival. I
consume every bit of media about the Fyre festival. I Watched the ep about it.
Then I saw that American greed is actually one of the best shows on TV. So I
set Sonarr to grab every episode. It grabbed 114 of them. And I have now
watched them all all.

But 80% of the episodes deal with Ponzi schemes claiming unrealistic returns.
Part of me feels bad for the people. The other part doesn't since they think
they can get a 5% return a month. If you can do 5% a month wall street will
toss trillions at you.

~~~
orf
Is Sonarr good? I use plex and some manual steps, but it looks interesting
from their website alone.

~~~
wil421
Absolutely. Automate TV downloads, pick the quality, pick the language if you
want, and let it do its thing. If it’s not in your Usenet/Plex pipeline you
need to add it.

There’s one for movies called Radarr and one for music called Lidarr. I’ve
found them less useful and don’t use them but it’s worth a try.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Why do you find radarr less useful?

With jackett you can use the same interface as sonarr to an indexer. They are
very similar in concepts too (radarr is based on sonarr).

The only truly missing feature is the ability to request a movie in another
language. Radarr is strictly one language per movie.

------
Lucadg
a week ago I passed in front the One Coin shop in Sofia. It was open.

I was surprised as It had been closed for a long time.

I had listened to the BBC podcast and was curious so I tried to enter.

It was locked and a lady came to open. There were a couple of people, maybe
customers. There were books, CDs and other material.

I stayed two minutes and head to the exit. The door was locked and the lady
came to open.

That's all.

It felt weird.

~~~
TimTayshun
Journalist Nikolai Stroyanov from Sofia's Kapitol (newspaper) took the
following photos a few days ago, on Nov. 21, indicating what seemed to be a
clearing out of the Onecoin offices:

[https://twitter.com/Svrakata/status/1197494888457293824](https://twitter.com/Svrakata/status/1197494888457293824)

~~~
Lucadg
Maybe a renovation for a new grand opening? Although improbable nothing
surprises me anymore in this story.

------
tlogan
My experience with OneCoin is that people who were involved in it were shady
and trying get less shady people on the board. That was back in 2016 / 2017.

At least in Eastern Europe, it was going like this (translation): The "master
scammer" created a platform for "wannabe scammers" to scam others. But the
master is the master.

Typical ponzi scheme: everybody knew but they were hoping the get bigger
sucker.

~~~
helpPeople
My question, are there innocent stupid people?

Or did every investor want a get rich quick sheme?

~~~
dghughes
So many people have said to me "you're into computers" how do they get into
this Bitcoin thing. I said there's a lot too it and explain any of it their
eyes glaze over. They just want to put down $100 and make millions in a week
with no effort.

I remember when Bitcoin was cheap as hell I think it was $1 bought you 1,000
Bitcoins so I am no Bitcoin expert or I would be a billionaire. Yes I dream of
having some on an old hard drive (I'm sure we all do).

~~~
danielfoster
This. I feel bad for the people who were scammed but my sympathy is limited.
It seems most just wanted an easy way to get rich and didn’t want to ask the
obvious.

------
fergie
Great podcast. It fizzles out a bit in the end, but still well worth a listen.

FWIW the podcast ends up being more of a critique of MLM schemes in general
rather than Ruja Ignatova herself (although she is certainly a crook).

The last episode is also interesting as it highlights the motivations of the
whistleblowers- these people are mostly speaking out against OneCoin because
they are promoting competing sh*tcoin schemes rather than because of any
objection in principle to the idea of marketing rubbish to vulnerable people.

See also "The strange religion of cryptocurrency", where the same journalist
talks about OneCoin (and money in general) as a religion. Very interesting.
[https://audioboom.com/posts/7386285-the-strange-religion-
of-...](https://audioboom.com/posts/7386285-the-strange-religion-of-
cryptocurrency)

------
Mar_1
For extensive coverage of OneCoin scam since 2015, see
[https://behindmlm.com/companies/onecoin/](https://behindmlm.com/companies/onecoin/)

Also, US lawyer Mark Scott was convicted earlier this week of money laundering
for OneCoin:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50509299](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50509299)

------
Kovah
I can remember OneCoin back in the day. And I also remember that when visiting
their website, my first though was "this must be a gigantic scam!" It was
kinda obvious. Unbelievable that people fell for this. But like with all
pyramid schemes or similar scams, they target a very specific sort of people.

~~~
jcora
What kind of people? Just gullible or something more specific?

~~~
sukilot
stupid + immoral. You need both to get scammed.

~~~
wool_gather
Not being stupid is no defense against being conned. On the contrary, a truly
stupid mark isn't going to understand the scheme; an intelligent person will
immediately see the way they stand to benefit. It's the willingness to cheat
that gets you in trouble.

Check out _The Big Con_ by David Maurer

~~~
MiroF
You need to be not stupid stupid, but reading these articles it is pretty
clear that the marks are not "smart" if they're investing in something they
don't understand.

~~~
rasz
Tell that to all the College professors getting 419ed, including at least two
Harvard ones.

------
bitcurious
>Even the most obscure entry or innocuous comment on a forum is usually saved
somewhere, and with enough digging can be found. You've heard of Google, but
there are several other search engines that specialise in this.

That's a very interesting throwaway line; anyone know what those products are?

~~~
jobigoud
Yeah, at some point Google had an option to search specifically in groups and
forums but they killed it. I would also very much like a forum-specific search
engine, very often I'm looking for _discussion_ about a subject rather than
the subject itself.

Ideally it would source from forums, reddit/HN/Digg and the like, comments
directly under articles/blogs, Wikipedia talk pages, archives of newsgroups,
mailing lists, Google groups and Yahoo groups, etc.

------
djhworld
Another aspect of the OneCoin scam is they targeted people from the Muslim
community by using a fake certificate/endorsement that suggested OneCoin was
Sharia compliant.

~~~
stef25
Cause they just wanted another way to end up getting killed.

------
rv-de
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=638_Jpp2Rq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=638_Jpp2Rq8)

:D ... cringe-inducing to the point it could gag a maggot ...

~~~
Mar_1
If you are ready for some more cringe, take a look how the ghu-neh-ses block
for blockchain v2 was "mined" live, instantly doubling the coin balance for
several million members and raising the circulating supply of OneCoin from 2
billion to 120 billions, because that's how cryptos run in the Ponzi land:
[https://youtu.be/1x7gur0JgkY?t=378](https://youtu.be/1x7gur0JgkY?t=378)

~~~
CheesecakeFred
Somehow there seems to be a fundamental difference in cognition between me and
these people getting scammed like that. I cannot even begin to imagine the
mindset, filter bubble, delusions one must suffer to not see right through a
scam like that from the first second...

I guess greed makes some people really stupid?

------
anm89
Everything else aside, this article has an unbelievable amount of typos for a
mainstream publication

~~~
osrec
Seems to be common with BBC articles lately. I read their tennis pages often,
and it amazes me how often they get the winner of a match wrong! It's almost
as if the reviewer has no context when checking through the article.

~~~
yahwrong
Probably AI written content.

~~~
osrec
I don't think the content is AI generated, but I know for sure their Brexit
articles get a tonne of bots spamming the comments section.

------
djhworld
This is basically a write-up of the entire Missing CryptoQueen podcast if
anyone didn't get a chance to listen. Almost reads like a transcription in a
way....

------
growt
Why, with all that money, didn't they simply buy a Blockchain? It's not hard,
fork bitcoin, build something on Ethereum. Or did it simply not matter for the
pyramid scheme? If in the end they had a crappy Blockchain and the investors
would have gotten their coins, would they've been guilty of anything?

~~~
hyper_reality
It seems like they tried, but no blockchain expert would go near it because it
was so clearly a Ponzi-type scheme. Just look at the website:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20150302021347/http://www.onecoin...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150302021347/http://www.onecoin.eu/)

~~~
hondadriver
Reminds me of [https://timeai.io/](https://timeai.io/)

I thought these companies only existed in movies... But obviously they got
their inspiration somewhere.

(Yes 'they' can intentionally be read both ways)

~~~
selimthegrim
That website looks and reads like they’re selling some high end Breitling or
Patek Philippe

~~~
hondadriver
No not watches, 'quantum' cryptography. More background:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/crown_sterlin...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/crown_sterling_.html)

~~~
dmix
One of the articles mention he speaks at something called CPAK which looks
like some psuedo-science new agey non-sense forum: "Conference of Precession
and Ancient Knowledge".

[https://cpakonline.com/](https://cpakonline.com/)

Robert Grant is listed as a: "Polymath and Expert in Sonic Geometry"

I love this stuff, look at all of the listed "experts" each with books
published ("Sacred Cosmology of Ancient Egypt"). Humans are so weird.

------
ryanlol
>Another tip he gives us is to find out where she has been on her yacht. We
should try to get the tracker off it, he says, and he doesn't appear to be
joking. I explain that this is probably beyond my abilities (apart from being
illegal)

Uh, why would this be illegal? Is flightaware illegal? Or the yacht tracking
sites?

~~~
wlll
Yacht nav systems can log where you have been, but a small minority of ships
will permanently log their location somewhere publicly accessible. To get the
data you'd need to get onto the yacht to access the nav system.

~~~
imglorp
Even small private vessels have AIS these days, especially if nicely
appointed. Of course, the transponder can be turned off if you want to avoid
any ... Imperial entanglements.

~~~
wlll
They're mostly AIS receivers for the smaller vessels rather than tranceivers,
but yes, that is true (for a boat the size I'd estimate this was it likely had
a tranceiver). You also can very easily turn AIS off onboard if you don't want
to be tracked, whereas there's less danger of someone sneaking onboard to look
at the nav system so that might have been left on.

 _edit_ I just re-read your comment and realised I missed most of it somehow.
It's late here, and you were spot on, sorry!

 _edit edit_ Also, It's an older code sir, but it checks out.

------
calibas
I briefly worked for this group of people who were supposed to be launching a
new cryptocurrency right at the peak of all the hype. It was promised to be
this next generation technology that was going to make everyone involved rich,
and it would never drop below $2 USD a coin. It was also supposed to be part
of this new paradigm for society that would usher in a Golden Age.

Only problem was, every single thing I mentioned above was complete nonsense.
The cryptocurrency didn't actually exist, and despite having multiple "crypto
experts", nobody really understood how a blockchain actually worked. I quit
after I started to see what was really going on, though everything smelled
fishy from the beginning.

------
dannylandau
Painful to read, and realize that even minor ICO's can potentially do
substantial harm especially when investors come from the African continent
where even small sums of money represents their life savings and assets.

------
orf
> "I did the calculation how many coins we needed to become the richest person
> on the planet," Igor says. "I said to Andreea, 'We need to build it up to
> 100 million coins, because when this coin goes to €100 and we have 100
> million, we are richer than Bill Gates.' It's mathematic. It's easy as
> that."

There is an argument to be made here that someone who is that irresponsible,
or frankly stupid, has only themselves to blame.

~~~
sokoloff
My favorite part of that is, _even if_ that happened, Bill Gates would still
be ~10x richer...

------
ganitarashid
Funny thing is I know of of at least two other women that currently call
themselves Crypto Queen, or a variation of that, who are doing the TED circuit
and similar.

------
steven_is_false
Anyone else feel buying drugs online is a relatively more legitimate use than
most of what crypto is promoted for?

~~~
stef25
There's other uses than buying drugs online?

~~~
rwmurrayVT
You can also buy all the tools and materials for fraud !!

------
alexnewman
So I work in crypto hcaptcha.com. And it feels as though beyond money
laundering and flim flam, people have left all the innovation to me.
Blockchain, especially ethereum is incredibly cool tech if you can deal with
the learning curve. It's got built in PKI, a decent consensus mechanism and
with IPFS/IPNS tagging data and hashing it back to the blockchain is easy.

There's a common trope, the problem isn't [insert programming language like
python or java] . It's the [programming lang] programmers. The same is true
with blockchain. Very few people with reputations and skills wanna go into
this field because of these scammers.

------
insta_anon
Just out of curiosity: say you've recently stolen more than $1B from various
people, some of whom might have a somewhat shady background - how would you
disappear in this time where everything is electronically tracked, you have
instagram, facebook, forums etc.?

~~~
jasomill
Disguise my appearance. Assume a cover identity. Start a new life.

If social media use is required, create new accounts.

------
hatmatrix
Why can't they subpoena the lawyer husband? Presumably he knows her
whereabouts because of their baby.

~~~
sokoloff
In the US spouses cannot be compelled to testify about/against the other. I
assume this would include a location question. Not sure of laws elsewhere.

------
LouisSayers
Steals billions of dollars then catches a RyanAir flight?!

RyanAir has to be the most budget airline I’ve ever been on...

~~~
bitL
She got hold of a "big passport"; to me that implies some mafia/secret service
was involved and she likely wanted to blend in with her new identity.

~~~
TimTayshun
My sources say that she acquired a real passport with real photo and fake
identity from corrupt, but "legitimate" sources in Ukraine.

------
blueadept111
She performed the valuable economic function of separating fools from their
money.

------
sjreese
Only she was heading to a very public event in Portugal - a bitcoin
evangelist. A history of good education and fully understood bitcoin ( but
like Jimmy Hoffa ) She is being defined as if she had 3 million bitcoin in her
handbag at the time of her kidnapping and murder.

------
jessaustin
McKinsey...

------
praeconium
"I did the calculation how many coins we needed to become the richest person
on the planet," Igor says. "I said to Andreea, 'We need to build it up to 100
million coins, because when this coin goes to €100 and we have 100 million, we
are richer than Bill Gates.' It's mathematic. It's easy as that."

Great math-guy.. wonder where he got info on Gates wealth.

~~~
kingcobraninja
Not really though because they would have a lot of trouble converting all
those coins to another currency at that exchange rate. Once they started
selling, demand at that price would be met and the bidding price would fall.

~~~
smabie
Sure, but mark-to-market is a commonly used method of valuing assets. Of
course what you’re saying is true, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with
valuing a portfolio like this. Even with real currency, you can’t directly
measure value in another currency for the reasons you gave. So it’s probably
just a better idea to ignore slippage and bid-ask bread when talking about
value.

~~~
est31
There is a difference though: Google isn't built on a scam. While another dot
com boom isn't impossible, it's still not very likely that it will happen in
the near future. So your Google cofounder with tons of Google shares can
divest from them over a period of decades, building themselves a diverse
portfolio. A pyramid scheme currency only has very short lived and temporary
value. Thus you need to exit before the scam is detected. The faster you try
to exit though, the more the effect that GP mentioned becomes relevant.

Anyways, even if she had managed to exit with a large stash of money, she'd
still have to keep it out of reach from the government authorities, lawyers,
etc. So even if she owned $1B momentarily, it wouldn't be of much worth to her
if she (rightfully) lost it all again in 4 years plus interest. That's why
criminals have such an extravagant lifestyle: they can't think long term
because long term they might be in prison, killed by another criminal, etc.
Same goes for rich people in authoritarian regimes: the moment they fall out
of favour, their money is gone, so often they want to get it out of the
country before the tides turn on them.

------
angry_octet
TLDR: A fool and their money are soon parted, in this case by a pyramid scheme
with crypto currency flavouring.

~~~
angry_octet
Oh no the crypto bois are mad at me.

------
trpc
Thanks to these con artists and careless big investors like SoftBank, once the
recession comes, blockchain, AI, etc... will go into another long winter

~~~
Avalaxy
I don't think it's fair to put blockchain and AI on the same pile.

~~~
netsharc
There's just too much money swimming around nowadays looking for good ROI
(thanks to government austerity and quantitative easing..), so even stupid
things like recipe subscriptions or illegal taxis are being valued at billions
of dollars.

Arguably the world's economy is a Ponzi scheme anyway, but the people in
control of it will do anything to keep the smoke-and-mirrors-show running.

------
mindfulplay
Bitcoin is no different. It's just a scam on a much longer timescale.

~~~
tshanmu
Faith is the only difference between scam and valuable. USD/CAD is also just
paper blessed by a central bank..

~~~
Nasrudith
Government currencies have a concrete function - if you are legally required
to pay taxes in it that gives it a very concrete value of being needed to
operate legitimately in a country. That makes it very different from just
faith even taking the most cynical possible view of governments - even if a
complete collapse in faith would undermine it greatly.

~~~
tsimionescu
It's even more than that. You are legally required to accept the national
currency for the settlement of debts. If you are a US entity and we have a
contract where I owe you 1 btc, you must accept the equivalent amount of
dollars as settlement of the debt.

You are allowed to accept payments in different currencies, or even barter,
but you can't require them.

~~~
beerandt
That's not _entirely_ true. It's perfectly legal to specify contractual terms
of payment, including what form it must take.

It's only when the form of payment isn't specified, that dollars must
accepted, by default.

If our contract was specifically for 1 BTC, it's legal to demand 1 BTC, and to
otherwise sue for breach of contract.

After all, how else would a contract for currency exchange be enforced?

If you owed me 1 btc because I paid you 1.02 btc in dollars (2% transaction
fee), it would make no sense to allow you to simply repay me with the
equivalent of 1 btc in dollars, and consider that to be a settled debt.

