Indictment against cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova

Public prosecutors in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have filed charges against the alleged OneCoin fraudster Ruja Ignatova, even though there is no trace of her or her alleged accomplice, the former Luxembourg spy Frank Schneider.

The indictment for investment fund was filed by the public prosecutor’s office in Bielefeld, according to German media reports last week.

Ignatova’s whereabouts are unknown; she was last seen in 2017. Investigators claimed that she defrauded three million people of several billion euros with her fraudulent cryptocurrency OneCoin.

Her reported accomplice, Frank Schneider, a former agent with Luxembourg’s Srel intelligence service, has not been seen since 2023, when he reportedly went on the run.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office is using this picture to search for Ruja Ignatova, the alleged inventor of the fictitious cryptocurrency OneCoin © Photo credit: -/Bundeskriminalamt/dpa

Ignatova’s whereabouts are unknown; she was last seen in 2017. Investigators claimed that she defrauded three million people of several billion euros with her fraudulent cryptocurrency OneCoin.

Her reported accomplice, Frank Schneider, a former agent with Luxembourg’s Srel intelligence service, has not been seen since 2023, when he reportedly went on the run.

The indictment only relates to some of the cases of fraud that Ignatova is accused of. They date from the period from December 2015 to August 2016, when Ignatova was based in Greven in North Rhine-Westphalia – which is why Bielefeld has jurisdiction.

Bielefeld senior public prosecutor Carsten Nowak told Westdeutscher Rundfunk TV: “With this indictment, we want to prevent Ruja Ignatova’s offences from coming under the statute of limitations. The indictment gives us five more years.”

Where is Ruja Ignatova?

If a court in Bielefeld rules to open proceedings, Nowak will get the extension he wants – five years in which to continue the investigation. However, there can be no trial in Ignatova’s absence. And no-one knows where the 45-year-old is.

In 2017, the so-called ‘cryptoqueen’ went into hiding and her trail was lost in Athens. She was then presumed dead for a time. But doubts about this were raised last year.

A man who allegedly killed Ignatova as a contract killer in 2018 was in prison in the Netherlands at the time in question, according to a television documentary by Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

The authorities, including chief public prosecutor Nowak, continue to assume that she is still alive. Whether she is in South Africa, as suggested by the WDR journalists, cannot be confirmed.

Where is Frank Schneider?

Ignatova and the OneCoin case have links to Luxembourg: Schneider worked as Ignatova’s head of security. Schneider had been under house arrest in France but has missing for the past two years.

He likely fled to avoid extradition to the US, where he faces up to 40 years in prison for his involvement in OneCoin – specifically, he is said to have used his espionage experience to warn accomplices of impending prosecutions.

Another Luxembourger, Pitt Arens, was CEO of OneCoin for a short time in 2017 but, according to his own account, joined the company too late – and then resigned – to be affected by the investigations against Ignatova and Schneider.

(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Translated using an AI tool and then adapted and edited by Aaron Grunwald.)