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Topics: BBC, Documentaries, Tyla Recommends, True Crime, Crime
Kya Buller
Topics: BBC, Documentaries, Tyla Recommends, True Crime, Crime
A brand new BBC documentary looking into the extraordinary life of 'the world's most wanted woman' has stunned viewers.
The explosive documentary follows the case of a woman dubbed 'The Missing Cryptoqueen' who hasn't been seen since 2017.
BBC Sounds originally made a podcast exploring the mystery in 2019, before the TV investigation aired last night (3 June).
A Bulgarian woman raised in Germany, Ruja Ignatova is wanted by the FBI after using fake cryptocurrency to scam people out of $4.5bn (£3.54bn).
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Oxford University graduate Ignatova went on to pursue a lucrative career in finance before launching her very own cryptocurrency,' OneCoin', in 2014.
Ignatova, known to many as Dr Ruja, convinced millions to invest in OneCoin, promising the same kind of high-value returns that other Bitcoin investors had delivered.
But the truth was a far cry from that.
In reality, Ignatova was embarking on investment fraud, and had the brains to do it without a digital record.
Ignatova had been reported, and so authorities in Germany and the UK began to get closer to apprehending her for the crimes.
Until one day in 2017 when she boarded a flight from Sofia to Athens and was never seen or heard from again.
It sounds like something straight out of a glamorous thriller - but is all true.
The documentary, The Missing Cryptoqueen: Dead or Alive?, explores the possibility that Ignatova is still out there somewhere - or, if the rumours are true, she was murdered as a result of her links to a Bulgarian crime boss.
Perhaps most chilling of all is that there have been supposed sightings of Ignatova in the time that has passed since that fateful flight to Athens - but none confirmed by law enforcement.
The documentary hears from Richard Reinhardt, who started the investigation into Ignatova's OneCoin for the US Internal Revenue Service alongside the FBI - and revealed a key character in the story.
Hristoforos Nikos Amanatidis, also known as Taki, was given the role of keeping Ignatova safe - and is thought to be a major criminal in Bulgaria.
Reinhardt said: "We were told, allegedly a big-time drug guy was in charge of her physical security.
“Taki came up more than once, it wasn’t like it was a one-off. That was a recurring theme.”
An assistant attorney added: "We do have evidence that a very significant, if not the most prolific, drug trafficker of all time in Bulgaria, was closely linked to OneCoin - served as [Ignatova’s] personal security guard."
Former Bulgarian deputy minister, Ivan Hristanov, said: "When we talk about Taki, he’s the head of the mafia in Bulgaria. He's extremely powerful."
What follows in The Missing Cryptoqueen: Dead or Alive? is a riveting investigation into whether Taki had Ignatova murdered.
Ultimately, until there is any proof either way, she remains the 'world's most wanted woman'.
The BBC wrote to Taki’s lawyers regarding the allegations, however they didn’t respond.
The Missing Cryptoqueen: Dead or Alive? is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.