OneCoin 詐騙贓款追回 1140 萬！加密女王 Ruja Ignatova 生死成謎

Gurnsey Island Seizes $14 Million in OneCoin-Related Assets

Gurnsey Island recovered $14 million in assets linked to OneCoin, accounting for only 0.2% of the total estimated loss. The founder Ruja Ignatova, known as the “Crypto Queen,” disappeared in 2017 after embezzling $5 billion. She remains one of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted, and Bulgarian authorities suspect she may have been murdered in 2018.

Gurnsey Island Seizes $14 Million in OneCoin Fraudulent Funds

According to a report published Monday by Gurnsey Island’s official newspaper, The Gurnsey News, officials did not specify details about the digital assets involved, but based on legal proceedings in the Royal Court, their estimated value is just under £9 million. This seizure was carried out following an overseas confiscation order issued by the Royal Court under the Gurnsey Island Crime (Proceeds of Crime) Law, which was updated in 2024 to govern seized assets.

The report states that these funds are held in an account at RBS International, located in Gurnsey Island, under the name Aquitaine Group Limited. Gurnsey Island is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel, known as an offshore financial center with low taxes and strong financial privacy protections. The choice to establish an account there was likely to leverage these advantages to hide illicit gains.

Authorities have not clarified whether other assets related to OneCoin are still under review. No new criminal charges have been announced yet. Although progress has been made in asset recovery, the $14 million recovered represents only about 0.2% of the estimated $5 billion total loss from OneCoin, highlighting the significant challenges in asset recovery. Decrypt has contacted Gurnsey Island authorities for comment and will update this article if they respond.

The Largest Cryptocurrency Scam in History: A Complete Analysis of OneCoin

OneCoin is one of the largest and longest-running cryptocurrency scams in history. In the mid-2010s, Bulgarian national Ruja Ignatova became the public face of OneCoin. Despite lacking a fully functional blockchain, she promoted it as a revolutionary cryptocurrency and expanded its reach worldwide. With her charisma and persuasive skills, she hosted lavish events and speeches globally, attracting millions of investors.

OneCoin operated as a classic Ponzi scheme. It claimed to have its own blockchain and cryptocurrency but in reality, no genuine blockchain technology existed. Investors purchased “education packages” that granted them rights to OneCoin tokens, which could only be traded on OneCoin’s internal platform and not on any public crypto exchanges. The scheme relied on continuously recruiting new investors to pay returns to early investors.

By 2017, regulatory agencies and prosecutors intervened, leading to the collapse of OneCoin. Ruja Ignatova disappeared shortly before U.S. authorities announced fraud charges related to the scheme. She is believed to have vanished after allegedly embezzling up to $5 billion from investors in 2017. Over the following years, prosecutors tracked accomplices and traced the flow of billions in stolen funds, expanding investigations across multiple jurisdictions.

Courts in the U.S. and Europe have filed charges against senior members, including Ignatova’s brother, with evidence showing the stolen assets were transferred through offshore entities and financial centers. By 2022, international law enforcement increased their focus on the case, with the FBI listing Ruja Ignatova among its Top Ten Most Wanted fugitives, and Europol also issuing a wanted notice.

Ruja Ignatova, Crypto Queen,’s Fate Remains a Mystery

Recent reports keep this mystery unresolved, with various theories ranging from sightings in Russia to the possibility that she was killed years ago. A Bulgarian media investigation by Bird claims that Ruja Ignatova was murdered in 2018, citing documents allegedly found on a murdered Bulgarian police officer as confirmation.

She remains one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, with her whereabouts unknown. She is listed on multiple international wanted lists, including the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted and Europol’s most-wanted criminals. The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to her arrest.

Speculation about her fate varies. Some claim to have seen her in Russia, Dubai, or elsewhere, but these sightings are unverified. Bulgarian investigators suggest she may have been murdered in 2018, possibly due to gang conflicts or silencing witnesses, though the sources and authenticity of this report are questioned.

Asset Recovery Challenges Highlight the Regulatory Difficulties of Crypto Scams

“OneCoin’s fraud predates modern on-chain detection capabilities. Today’s threat detection systems can identify suspicious patterns in real-time, including transactions funded by mixing services,” said Ohad Shperling, CEO of modular Web3 security firm IronBlocks, in an interview with Decrypt.

Shperling pointed out that if these technologies had existed and been widely used when OneCoin launched in 2014, the scheme “might have been curtailed earlier through automatic flagging of anomalous transaction patterns and unverified contract interactions.” The recovered assets in Gurnsey only account for about 0.2% of OneCoin’s total losses, indicating that “comprehensive asset recovery in crypto fraud cases still faces enormous obstacles.”

Shperling explained that malicious actors still control hundreds of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency, but recovering these funds is difficult because authorities need access to private keys or must seize funds on centralized exchanges, which is hard when suspects are not detained. He cited data from Elliptic showing that criminals increasingly use “privacy-enhancing technologies, with privacy coins expected to account for 42% of dark web crypto transactions in 2024.” He added that this makes recovering losses “exponentially more difficult.”

However, Shperling expressed cautious optimism, suggesting that “there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about economic recovery in the coming years.” He emphasized that more direct opportunities lie in prevention, as advances in on-chain monitoring make it easier to detect potential scams early—before they reach the catastrophic scale of OneCoin.