Cryptoqueen: Episode Two: The Big Scam

The search for clues leads further to London. Here, along with Sofia, Dubai and Hong Kong, was the most important branch of OneCoin. Here, the South African and banker Duncan Arthur worked for Ruja Ignatova – without suspecting that he was involved in a worldwide fraud. He was officially responsible for making sure everyone complied with the law, but actually he mainly looked after Ruja’s luxury flats in London and built a OneCoin marketplace, a kind of Amazon for OneCoin users. Duncan Arthur also activated his many contacts to boost business in Africa – without knowing that he was collaborating in a global scam. “Banking the unbanked” was OneCoin’s slogan to convince especially poor people to invest in OneCoin. The promise: easy bank transfers worldwide and prosperity through constantly rising prices. In Uganda, African student Daniel Leinhardt tells how he and many others fell for the scam, how friends sold OneCoin packages to relatives, collected commissions for it, and are nowhere to be seen now that the party is over. 

Duncan Arthur gives an impressive account of OneCoin’s worldwide triumph, of how 20,000 supporters and investors gathered at Wembley Arena at the height of the scam. How they cheered for Ruja Ignatova, how victims and critics gradually came forward and the façade of the glittering cryptocurrency slowly crumbled. How police officers in Great Britain, the USA and Germany begin to investigate and try to convict the crypto queen. But she knows about the investigation. She is very well connected and even maintains her own security service. So Ignatova is always one step ahead of the investigators. And her lawyers in the USA, Great Britain and Germany ensure with constant lawsuits that it remains unclear whether OneCoin is really a fraud. So thousands more victims fall for their promises.