If you have an interest in Cryptocurrency, the chances are you've heard of the missing Cryptoqueen, Ruja Ignatova.
Best known for founding the fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme OneCoin, the Bulgarian-born woman is now wanted by the FBI.
Ignatova has been missing since 2017 with rumours of whether she is still alive and in hiding or has since passed.
At the time of writing, the FBI is offering a reward of $5,000,000 for any information that would help them find the Cryptoqueen.
Who is Ruja Ignatova the missing Cryptoqueen?
Ruja Ignatova was born in Bulgaria in 1980 and raised in Germany, it's believed she studied at the University of Oxford and later went on to earn a PhD inprivate international law from the University of Konstanz.
After graduating and gaining her PhD, the Cryptoqueen went on to pursue a career in finance but in 2012 was convicted of fraud in Germany.
She received a suspended 14-month sentence for her connections to a company that declared bankruptcy soon after it was brought by her father.
One year later,Ignatova began getting involved in a multi-level marketing scam, BigCoin, however, that was not the scam that saw her wanted by the FBI.
Ignatova went on to launch the cryptocurrency company OneCoin which promised to better the returns of early Bitcoin investors.
OneCoin was later found to be a scam that saw $4 billion (£3.1bn) of investors' money lost and stolen.
In October 2017, investors from the US and Germany began to notice the scam and Inatova soon vanished.
It's reported that the Cryptoqueen went missing after taking an early morning flight with Ryanair from Sofia, Bulgaria to Athens.
Since being declared missing, there have been several reports of her whereabouts but she has yet to be found.
Ignatova's brother, Konstantin was arrested in 2019 for fraud in connection with OneCoin and her co-founder Sebastian Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement.
In June 2022,Ignatova was added to the FBI's 'Most Wanted List' and is currently the most wanted woman in the world.
Ignatova gained the name 'the missing Cryptoqueen' after becoming the focus of a BBC podcast and a book written by Jamie Bartlett.
