A Mysterious Woman Vanishes After Pulling Off A $4 Billion Dollar Fraud

 Greetings Everyone!

    Sunday comes and I hope that all of you slept well and are awakening happy! I shall begin today's Op-Ed with a wanted poster as follows:

The FBI says the 'Crypto-queen' scammed investors out of $4 billion and vanished. She's now one of 11 women who have made the agency's most wanted list in its 72-year history.

By Sarah Al-Arshani

Insider

 5 days ago

Ruja Ignatova

FBI

• The FBI's recent update to its Most Wanted list features the "Crypto Queen," who tricked investors out of billions.
• The suspect — Ruja Ignatova — was only the 11th woman to make it onto the list in its history.
• The women on the list range from murderers to scammers to anti-war activists.

The so-called 'Crypto-queen' — Ruja Ignatova

Ruja Ignatova

FBI

In the FBI's Most Wanted List's 72-year history, only 11 women have made it on it. The women ranged from political activists like Angela Davis to the most recent, Ruja Ignatova.

Ignatova became the 11th woman to make it on the FBI's most-wanted list for allegedly scamming wealthy investors out of $4 billion between the end of 2014 and 2016 in a Ponzi scheme under her company OneCoin. She then boarded a plane and disappeared in 2017 and has not been seen since.

US authorities charged Ignatova with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering in 2019 in absentia.

The FBI is now offering $100,000 for information on her whereabouts but suspects she may have had plastic surgery or altered how she looks in some ways.

Shanika S. Minor

    This is a fascinating case. The FBI has maintained The Ten Most Wanted List of fugitives for 72 years. In over 7 decades, only 11 women have hit the list. Ten were captured; some on the day that they hit this infamous list. Ms. Ignatova remains at large over a decade after she made the list.

       Her crime involved fraud in the range of $4 billion dollars. Please do not assume that she got to keep all the money. She was running what I would call a Ponzi scheme. This was named after an Italian fraudster who pioneered this crime in the 1920s. Money from new investors is used to pay old investors. An illusion is created that investors are making big profits. Eventually, these schemes become unsustainable and implode when investors stop being paid. My educated guess is that Ms. Ignatova ended up with around $100 million US in her pocket.

      Published reports said that she got on a plane and then vanished. It is speculated that she got plastic surgery and her fingerprints burned off. We must assume that she used her money to buy citizenship in a new country under her new identity. She severed all ties with the US including banks. She does not contact old friends and family members. We can imagine that she is, as the old saying goes, "living happily ever  after somewhere in the world."

    Rest assured that the wealthiest and most powerful government in the world is spending a ton of money to try to find her. The FBI and US Marshal's Service are working in tandem to try to locate her. Interpol has "a red notice" on her. Law enforcement agencies all over the world have been alerted. Airports and hotels all over the world are on alert for her. All she has to do is make one mistake and it is all over. I must say that she is a very clever lady.

         Ms. Ignatova no longer exists. The person in the picture is living a new life that only started a few years ago. She has no memories of her parents or her childhood. I shall end this morning with a philosophical concept once presented in a television episode of Star Trek as follows:

    "If you don't have a past then you can't have a future."

Give thanks to your higher power for your good fortune in life!

-JackW