The “Crypto Queen,” a notorious German national multi-level cryptocurrency scammer, now has a bounty of $5 million. This marks the highest reward offered by the FBI for a female criminal.
According to the BBC on the 28th, the FBI recently updated their most-wanted list, increasing Ignatova’s bounty to $5 million. This represents a significant increase from the initial bounty of $100,000 when Ignatova was first added to the list in June 2022.
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, announced, “We are offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Ignatova’s capture.” He added, “Ignatova is a German passport holder and might have changed her appearance through plastic surgery.”
Miller further stated, “It is suspected that Ignatova is accompanied by armed guards or armed colleagues,” explaining, “She may have fled to the United Arab Emirates, Russia, or Greece.”
Born in Bulgaria in 1980 and a German national, Ignatova founded the fraudulent multi-level cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin.
Ignatova, along with her accomplice Karl Sebastian Greenwood, stands accused of defrauding more than 3.5 million investors from 2014 to 2016, resulting in embezzled funds totaling $4 billion. With the money earned from the crime, she lived a lavish lifestyle. She resided in a high-end penthouse in London and owned a yacht worth over $7 million until her arrest warrant was issued in October 2017.
Her accomplice, Greenwood, was arrested in Thailand in 2018 and was found guilty of multi-level financial fraud and money laundering by a U.S. district court last year, receiving a 20-year sentence.
