Authorities in Germany have managed to take control of millions of euros’ worth of assets allegedly belonging to OneCoin’s founder, Ruja Ignatova. The funds will be used to compensate victims of the fraudulent scheme founded by the woman dubbed “Cryptoqueen,” who is still wanted around the world.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bielefeld, Germany, has seized approximately €10.1 million ($11.4 million) from Ignatova’s assets. Efforts to that end have been successful, the office announced on Monday, quoted by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) news agency. The money came from the sale of two apartments in London and will be used to compensate Ruja’s victims, German prosecutors also detailed. A luxury penthouse and an adjacent flat in the British capital’s Kensington district, valued at £12.5 – £13.5 million, had been acquired through shell firms.
Germany believes properties were purchased with criminal proceeds
Authorities in Germany believe that the properties were purchased with criminal proceeds from the activities of the $4.5 billion cryptocurrency scam OneCoin that she co-founded and operated. Both hit the market in early 2023 at the request of the Bielefeld prosecutor’s office, after Ruja Ignatova was declared the owner of the property in the affluent neighborhood. This summer, a court in Guernsey, where the formal owners were based, made a decision.
In the hearing, it was determined that another £8.59 million held by Ignatova in a bank account on the island should be seized, too. These funds were also slated for return to the Federal Republic, where they will be used for further compensation of investors defrauded by the Cryptoqueen’s notorious pyramid structure. OneCoin was founded in 2014 and functioned as a multi-level-marketing network with global reach, pitching a fake cryptocurrency with the same name, which was advertised as a “Bitcoin killer.”
More than 3 million people are believed to have put money into the massive Ponzi scheme, based on the company’s own stats, with total investments exceeding $4 billion by the last quarter of 2016. Ruja Ignatova, who holds a German passport, was last seen in late 2017 when she boarded a flight for Athens from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where she was born. She disappeared shortly after the United States issued a warrant for her arrest and is now wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Europol and Interpol.
Despite occasional reports of her whereabouts, including some suggesting Ruja may still be in Greece, she hasn’t been found yet, dead or alive, and the manhunt continues. The so-called Cryptoqueen is largely considered the mastermind of OneCoin, one of the largest frauds in crypto history, but she wasn’t the only one who orchestrated the project. The scam’s co-founder, Karl Sebastian Greenwood, a citizen of Sweden and Britain, was arrested in 2018. He pleaded guilty in 2022 and got 20 years in prison for wire fraud and money laundering.
Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin, who took over after her disappearance, was eventually detained in 2019 in the U.S., where he pleaded guilty to Onecoin-related charges while seeking witness protection. In September 2025, German prosecutors filed charges against Ignatova. The move sought to prevent the alleged offenses from becoming time-barred, the DPA reminded in its report. “The offences for which she is charged will reach the statute of limitations in 2031,” the German news agency highlighted this week, noting the charges include building a pyramid scheme.
