One coin and bitcoin

Bulgarian entrepreneur Ruja Ignatova wanted to "bury BitCoin" and created a new cryptocurrency that was to change the world: "OneCoin".
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And then in , the ownership of Artefix was sold to an unknown man in his 20s. For several months, a French journalist called Maxime Grimbert tried to unpick OneCoin's corporate workings, collecting as many company names and bank account details as he could. I show his results to Bullough, who immediately notices how many British companies there are. He takes the first one on the list and looks it up on the Companies House website.

Everything is meant to be transparent - the website contains the details of every company in the UK. It's thought to be a key anti-corruption tool. They have filed no financial information at all. The UK began to insist recently that companies must enter the name of the person with "significant control" - the real owner.

That's illegal… That is an anonymous shell company, as anonymous as anything that you can buy anywhere in the Seychelles or Nevis or the Marshall Islands or Vanuatu. So much for following the money. In an interconnected global economy, assets can simply vanish, and you end up chasing shadows. When you're dealing with a scam worth billions of euros, it's not unusual for shadowy groups to get involved. Several of the people Georgia and I interviewed spoke darkly about mysterious people and connections they didn't want to name. He tells me he's received death threats as a result of speaking out.

I would have just turned my back and walked away," he says. When I ask him who might be behind the threats, he won't elaborate. It starts to get very very very scary, very very very fast. People involved at the early stages have told him it was never supposed to be a billion-dollar scam.

Dr Ruja disappears

She tried to close it down, he says, but the dark forces wouldn't let her. Igor Alberts, the MLM seller, also talks about the involvement of "very influential people". When I ask for more details, he replies: "No, I cannot tell that because I don't want to take that risk with our lives. It's not clear who Bjorn and Igor are talking about, or whether they are even talking about the same people, but the US Department of Justice claims to have evidence of a link between Dr Ruja's brother, Konstantin Ignatov - who took over the running of OneCoin when Ruja disappeared - and "significant players in Eastern European organised crime".

Just as he was boarding his flight home, he was pounced on by FBI agents, arrested ,and charged with fraud in connection with OneCoin.

2011 — Bitcoin taken up by darknet markets

Around the same time, the US authorities charged Dr Ruja in absentia for wire fraud, security fraud and money laundering. Amazingly, even after this, OneCoin continued to function - and people continued to invest in it. When Georgia and I visited Sofia a month later, Dr Ruja's personal mansion appeared to be locked up and empty, but the OneCoin office gave every appearance of being a busy workplace.

OneCoin - Wikipedia

Investors often told us that what drew them in initially was the fear that they would miss out on the next big thing. They'd read, with envy, the stories of people striking gold with Bitcoin and thought OneCoin was a second chance. Many were struck by the personality and persuasiveness of the "visionary" Dr Ruja. Investors might not have understood the technology, but they could see her talking to huge audiences, or at the Economist conference. They were shown photographs of her numerous degrees, and copies of Forbes magazine with her portrait on the front cover. The degrees are genuine.

The Forbes cover isn't: it was actually an inside cover - a paid-for advertisement - from Forbes Bulgaria, but once the real cover was ripped off, it looked impressive. But it seems it's not just the promise of riches that keeps people believing. She was entered into a Whatsapp group, with its own "leader" who disseminated information from the headquarters in Sofia. And McAdam's leader prepared her carefully for conversations with OneCoin sceptics. Even Google - 'Don't listen to Google! Prof Eileen Barker of the London School of Economics, who has spent years studying groups like the Moonies and Scientologists, says there are similarities between OneCoin and messianic millennium cults, where people believe they are part of something big that is going to change the world - and no matter what the evidence, once they've signed up, it's very hard for them to admit they are wrong.

You think, 'Wait a bit longer. Money might push people to invest in the first place, but the sense of belonging, of doing something, of achieving something, is why they stay, Barker says. In an ideal world, regulators would take action to protect consumers from scams like OneCoin. But the authorities all over the world have been slow to react, partly because the whole area of cryptocurrencies is relatively new.

Less than a year later, the warning was removed from the website. Game over. The fact that OneCoin was operating internationally also created difficulties for the authorities. Such explanations don't offer much comfort to those affected. She now runs Whatsapp support groups for OneCoin investors who realise they have been swindled. Where's the help?


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More folk are going to promote this. It's a green light for the OneCoin scammers to continue and extort more money from innocent people in the UK and nothing has been done about it. They don't care! The City of London Police told the BBC: "There was insufficient evidence to support criminal proceedings against individuals based in the UK, though the force has never specified that there had been no concerns surrounding OneCoin. The force has provided assistance to foreign law enforcement partners in respect of their investigations concerning OneCoin personnel and will continue to do this.

one coin operating through bitcoin and off shell companies

If you believe you have been a victim of fraud in relation to OneCoin or you suspect someone of actively marketing OneCoin, please come forward and report it to Action Fraud online. Until this week, however, the OneCoin head office remained open for business - and people were continuing to promote the currency. Today doors are locked. No lights visible through the windows.

In the Ntangamo region of Uganda, not far from Rwandan border, most people make their living growing bananas, or sometimes cassava, sweet potato, beans or groundnut. He already had , shillings in savings, and to raise the rest he returned from the capital, Kampala, to his family home, took three goats raised by his younger brothers, and sold them.


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Daniel is one of thousands of Ugandans who've bought into Dr Ruja's fake cryptocurrency - and the OneCoin financial documents leaked to the BBC reveal that as time went on, investors like him became increasingly important to OneCoin. In Europe, less money was invested in the first six months of compared to the same period in But in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, it was the other way round. As the money started drying up in Europe, promoters turned more and more to countries like Uganda.

Daniel took me and Georgia to meet Prudence, who first introduced him to OneCoin.

The Complete Story Behind the OneCoin Cryptocurrency Scam

They are still friends, even though both now realise it's a scam. Prudence is a nurse in a Kampala slum, who thought she could make more money selling OneCoin and set about recruiting new investors. A senior promoter gave her a nice car to impress customers, and instructed her to visit farmers when their crops were being harvested and they had money in their pocket.

People in villages trust people from the city, Prudence tells us. To buy the packages some sold their cattle, their land and even their houses - with disastrous consequences. Some are running because they got loans from a bank.

'Fake Bitcoin' - How this Woman Scammed the World, then Vanished

Some are hiding. Some are divorced. If anyone asks Prudence when the investment is going to deliver the promised riches, she tells them to wait.


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    • She can't bring herself to tell them the truth. I don't want those people I introduced into OneCoin to see me moving around.