Cruel scammers Bernie Madoff, Ruja Ignatova and Jorge Sebastiao

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Cruel scammer such as Bernie Madoff, the person who swindled US$65 billion through a Ponzi scheme is now in jail. Ruja Ignatova, aka Crypto Queen aka Ruzha Plamenova Ignatova, who swindled US$4 billion is on FBI’s Most Wanted list and until now is on run. Ashraf Mufareh aka Ash Mufareh, a notorious scammer and the kingpin of OnPassive is yet to face legal consequences as he reportedly is sheltered by many influential individuals and politicians including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Scam cartel kingpins Jorge Sebastiao (Jorge Sebastião), Saif Al Naji, and Dan Settgast who are running scam ventures named EcoX, YEM Foundation, YEM coin, and Bank Bene Merenti are still continuing to swindle people using numerous fraud ventures are trying to establish their next base in Dubai with the agenda of swindling Emirati, Middle Eastern, Russian and Ukrainian people.

Following publication of an investigative report titled ‘Gang of scam Dracula lands in Dubai’ in Blitz, several people who were named as the members of a fraud venture named ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’ (Web Archive Link) contacted this newspaper and said they already have asked Jorge Sebastiao, the mastermind behind ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’ to remove their names from its website. One of them was Professor Don Milan Krajnc, also known as Milan Krajnc, a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; Professor of Public Management at the European Center for Peace and Development at the University for Peace, United Nations; and Professor of the Open World Program at Al-Khalifa Business School. Following instruction from Professor Don Milan Krajnc, Jorge Sebastiao has removed his name from ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’ website.

For those who still are unaware of  Jorge Sebastião (Jorge Sebastiao), here is a just a tip of the iceberg.

Spanish newspaper Cronica Business in its report said, Jorge Sebastião (Jorge Sebastiao), CEO of Nimbus Defi has cheated 136 million Euros from people by giving them false hopes through fake cryptocurrency.

Jorge Sebastiao (Jorge Sebastião) aka Nuno Jorge Da Cruz Sebastiao, who has past track record of series of frauds and scams, including swindling 136 million Euros from people in Spain through a cryptocurrency scam named Nimbus Defi, Professor Don Milan Krajnc, also known as Milan Krajnc sent us an email requesting to remove his name from the report and said he also has asked his name to be removed from ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’.

Spanish newspaper Cronica Business in its report said, Jorge Sebastião (Jorge Sebastiao), CEO of Nimbus Defi has cheated 136 million Euros from people by giving them false hopes through fake cryptocurrency.

On September 13, 2022, Jorge Sebastiao has launched a scamming entity named ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’, which is believed to be a massive fraudulent preparations eyeing on the ‘Dubai Metaverse Assembly’, an event organized by His Royal Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council.

In the website of ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’, an internationally known scammer like Jorge Sebastião (Jorge Sebastiao) has used names of many individuals such as Professor Milan Krajnc with the ulterior motive of giving legitimacy to this fraudulent venture, and it is anticipated that a large number of people, whose names are mentioned in the website of ‘EcoShuMi Foundation’ may not either know the actual background of people behind this fraud project or may have given consent to use their names without due diligence.

From Bernie Madoff to Ruja Ignatova

Commenting on Ruja Ignatova, The New York Post in its August 10, 2022 report said:

It’s not hard to draw similarities between Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy and Ruja Ignatova — the brilliant Bulgarian-German scam master behind the OneCoin swindle, history’s second biggest fraud after Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi con.

Both were charismatic star students with huge ambitions who used charm and good looks to convince people to throw fistfuls of money at their sketchy start-ups. Each also hooked up with a male lover who helped them rip off millions from dupes.

The one big difference: Holmes, who was recently convicted of defrauding investors, faces 20 years in jail and is reportedly flat broke, while the 42-year-old Ignatova remains on the lam after having vanished in 2017 with a fortune — leaving customers to eat some $4 billion in losses and her ex-partners to face jail time.

The Missing Crypto Queen: The Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency Con and the Woman Who Got Way With It,” a new book out now from British investigative reporter Jamie Bartlett, chronicles Ignatova’s journey from a working-class family in the Bulgarian port town of Ruse to becoming a star at McKinsey & Company and, as of June, being named as the newest member of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

Those humble beginnings fueled her quest. As Bartlett writes: “She desperately wanted to be rich.”

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Ignatova family moved from Bulgaria to Schramberg, Germany, in 1990, when Ruja was 10. Her father found work in a tire shop and they lived in a small apartment above a butcher shop.

“Even by the standards of demanding parents, Ruja was exceptional,” Bartlett writes.

“In school she was top of every class, brilliant in every subject. One teacher in Schramberg said she was the smartest student he’d ever taught.”

Finding friends proved more challenging.

“Fellow students found her aloof and arrogant,” according to the book, as “16-year-old Ruja strutted around the corridors in high heels and bright-red lipstick like she was too good for the place. ‘Nobody got really close to her,’ one schoolmate later recalled.”

At 18, she won a prestigious scholarship to Konstanz University, considered the “Harvard of Germany,” earning a doctorate in law in 2005. She then added a masters degree in comparative European law from Oxford.

But, Bartlett writes, “It was always the same story: she stood out as painfully clever yet aloof. Always distant, always top.”

The New York Post continued the report stating:

In November of that year, she attended a cryptocurrency seminar in Singapore, where she snagged a speaker’s slot and pitched an idea: a crypto-based pension plan. The concept “wasn’t especially memorable and she wasn’t a brilliant speaker either,” writes Bartlett. “But she clearly understood finance and banking.”

In attendance was the man who would soon become her partner, Sebastian Greenwood.

“Have you considered multi-level marketing?” he suggested, according to the book.

Together they hatched a plan to launch OneCoin, which Ruja dubbed the “Bitcoin killer,” and “the future of money.”

And she knew how to sell her product — by selling herself.

At an over-the-top pitch event at London’s Wembley Arena in 2016, Ignatova took the stage in a ball gown as Alicia Keys’ “This Girl Is on Fire!” blasted from speakers. “She strode out confidently, her long black hair, the deep-red lipstick, the embellished red gown glittering under the spotlights, the diamond earrings – everything exhibited success and glamour,” Bartlett writes.

A team of MLM veterans also hyped her new currency, and as with other such firms, convinced buyers to rope in friends and family members to sell OneCoin to everyone they knew, according to the book. 

Rather than peddling the currency, Ruja sold videos and pamphlets on how to invest in crypto — and gave away armfuls of OneCoin with every purchase. The educational content might have been of interest to some, but the currency was the real prize, particularly at the sky-high prices the company charged for packages. The top option, dubbed “Tycoon Trader,” cost €5,000.

And the feverish marketing campaign, feeding off greed and crypto FOMO, created a buying frenzy.

“Most OneCoin investors … said the same thing: they didn’t understand the technology, but they’d heard of Bitcoin and regretted having not invested,” Bartlett writes. “When Bitcoin went stratospheric in 2013, stories proliferated of ordinary people making life-changing money not because of any particular skill or specialized knowledge, but because they got in early.”

They should have been alarmed, he notes, by Ignatova’s decision to launch OneCoin as an MLM outfit. These firms — which range from legit operations to predatory pyramid schemes — typically hawk beauty, health or cleaning products, not financial commodities, which are subject to federal securities regulation. 

To stave off doubts, Ignatova brought in compliance lawyers to monitor the operation. She also touted OneCoin’s very own fully transparent blockchain — the permanent, tamper-proof log of all sales that had made Bitcoin secure and its success possible. This exchange assured OneCoin investors that their stakes were safe.

A cunning Ruja Ignatova even succeeded in 2015 Ruja Ignatova made with an Emirati royal, Sheikh Saud bin Faisal al Qassimi. She’d traded him access to a frozen bank account with €50 million in exchange for 230,000 Bitcoins, which, if she kept them, would be worth €9 billion today.

She also successfully stashed funds around the globe, including in Russia and Dubai.

After FBI agents grilled her younger brother, Konstantin, who worked as her personal assistant, Ruja realized the noose was tightening. She fled in 2017 on a flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, disappearing with riches she’d stashed across the globe, and leaving her lover, brother and business partners to face criminal prosecutions.


READ: Nobel Prize nominee Don Milan Krajnc calls for removing name from EcoShuMi Foundation


After fleeing the US, Ruja Ignatova underwent extensive plastic surgery and is using an alias, and she was tracked from Greece to Dubai to France to a yacht cruising around the Mediterranean. It wasn’t her own vessel, which was docked in Bulgaria. But with her wealth and fake passports, she could duck the law for years.

For now, with her victims dealing with ruin and heartbreak, “the Crypto Queen is floating somewhere on the high seas with a new name, a new face, and access to endless amounts of this strange new form of money”.

But the team of investigative reporters are making all-out efforts in finally getting every details of her current status.

The way Ruja Ignatova got vanished by swindling at least US$4 billion, scammers like Ashraf Mufareh aka Ash Mufareh, Jorge Sebastiao (Jorge Sebastião), Saif Al Naji, and Dan Settgast will also disappear soon, only after swindling billions of dollars and cheating hundreds and thousands of people throughout the world, including the UAE and the Middle East.

1 COMMENT

  1. There are so many other bitcoin scams in this world. Personally, I’m waiting for a movie about USI-Tech. To my knowledge, this is the second biggest bitcoin fraud after OnecCoin. And I`m really curious who will play Mr. Jicha, the founder of USI-tTech.
    There are rumors that he is out of Brazil and now living by Celine Jicha in Europe.

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