By: Arinze Okigbo

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Dr. Ruja and her family emigrated to Germany when she was ten years old, and she grew up in Schramberg in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Fast forward some years, and in 2005 she got her Ph.D. in European private law from the University of Constance. 

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She was convicted of fraud in 2012 in Germany in connection to her father, Plamen Ignatova's acquisition of a business that went bankrupt in dubious circumstances. She was imprisoned for 14 months.

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In 2014, Bitcoin became very popular, and many people started using it to make payments and transfers. Dr. Ruja noticed this, and she founded a Ponzi scheme called OneCoin. When she was introduced to the Wembley stage in front of the massive crowd during her world tour, it looked like a cult, with believers worshipping their "God." To them, Dr. Ruja was a perfect person. She was fluent in several languages, she had a Ph.D., was on the cover of several magazines like Bulgarian Forbes, and she had a persuasive charisma.

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OneCoin worked because people could choose several education packages that cost between €110 and €188,000. Each package could be used to "mine" OneCoins. But obviously, this was all fake. People promoted OneCoin as a revolution and a "Bitcoin Killer," but it was never a cryptocurrency. OneCoin didn't even have a public or a private blockchain.

A blockchain sounds complicated, but at the primary level, it is just a chain of blocks. In this context, it is digital information that is stored in a private or public database. They are important because they store information about transactions like the time, date, the amount paid or received, the people participating in the trade, and information that distinguishes it from other blocks.

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OneCoin bought two blockchain audits from some unknown German lawyers so that if someone confronted them, they could say that they had two blockchain audits and that everything was okay. But the reality is that they never used the blockchains. OneCoin was never listed on any public exchange. There was never a price of OneCoin, the price that everyone knew was the price that Dr. Ruja came up with, and everyone believed.

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In October of 2017, Dr. Ruja was due to have a presentation in Lisbon but didn't show up. Everyone was surprised because she was someone that was known for always being on time. Soon after, she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens, and to date, she hasn't been seen or heard from. After Dr. Ruja ran away, her brother Konstantin Ignatova took her position as CEO. He ran the company until the FBI convicted him of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces a maximum of 90 years in prison. 

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OneCoin destroyed and hurt many people because people believed it was worth investing in it but little did they know that it was a scam. I believed it could have been diverted if there were proper checks and balances in the crypto sector because someone would have noticed the flaws and gaps that OneCoin had.