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Bulgaria will file charges against a fugitive cryptocurrency scammer
BELGRADE, June 26 (Reuters) – Bulgaria will press charges against fugitive Ruja Ignatova, the so-called Cryptoqueen who co-founded a cryptocurrency scheme that regulators say defrauded investors of more than $4 billion, prosecutors said on Wednesday boss.
Ignatova, born in Bulgaria and a German citizen, has been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List for 2022 for fraud and money laundering. The U.S. agency is offering $5 million for information leading to her arrest for what it called “one of the largest global fraud schemes in history.”
Balkan authorities will conduct a joint investigation with the FBI into Ignatova, founder of OneCoin in Sofia in 2014, chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov said.
“She will also be charged in absentia in our country, which will allow the initiation of confiscation proceedings for the assets she illegally acquired.”
Another OneCoin co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, was Sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States in September and ordered to forfeit $300 million for creating the pyramid scheme.Former Head of Legal and Compliance at OneCoin he was sentenced in April to four years in prison in the United States.
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Reporting by Stoyan Nenov in Sofia and Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade; editing by Richard Chang
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