Bielefeld Prosecutor, Munich Police Commissioner deny Ignatova arrest
Since Nbox broke the news that Ruja Ignatova had allegedly been arrested last Saturday, verified information related to the arrest has been slow to surface.
Thus far we have The Gerlach Report claiming Ignatova was indeed arrested, and is being held at Stadelheim prison in connection to a fraud case in Bielefeld.
Countering this is the law firm Schulenberg & Schenk, who have previously represented OneCoin’s interests in Germany.
Schulenberg & Schenk told the online publication MLM Worldwide they’d confirmed Ignatova wasn’t being held at Stadelheim prison. They’d also purportedly confirmed Ignatova hadn’t been arrested in connection to the Bielefeld fraud case.
Overnight three important documents have surfaced, shedding further light on the story.
The first document is a letter from the Bielefeld Public Prosecutor’s Office dated November 7th.
The letter was sent in response to an enquiry as to whether an arrest warrant for Ruja Ignatova had been issued by the Bielefeld Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Here’s their reply;
As far as the information from your letter you have requested today … whether Dr. Ruja Ignatova was arrested at the instigation of Bielefeld prosecutors, I inform you that an arrest warrant (in Bielefeld) against (Ignatova) does not exist.
The second document an email from the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office, in response as to whether Ignatova was arrested at Munich airport as reported.
On November 7th A Senior Attorney from the Public Prosecutor’s Office replied;
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Much has not carried out a preliminary investigation into Ruja Ignatova.
We can not confirm an alleged arrest at Munich Airport and detention in Stadelheim prison.
The third document is a communication sent to the Bulgarian publication Capital Weekly, courtesy of Nickolay Stoyanov.
Capital Weekly reached out to North Bavaria police, who retain jurisdiction over Munich Airport.
In response to whether Ignatova was arrested at the airport, General Commissioner Jurgen Weigert replied;
Regarding your request I can tell you the following:
After consultation with the airport police, there are no findings regarding an arrest at Munich airport.
In the jurisdiction of the police department of Upper Bavaria North, no investigations are currently being conducted against (Ruja Ignatova).
Although Ruja Ignatova has yet to make a public appearance and remains in hiding, this appears to put to rest the claim she was arrested last Saturday.
Nbox were the initial source of the report, and thus far failed to publish a followup.
Rather than cautiously report on the alleged arrest as we did, The Gerlach Report instead ran with it.
Citing “confirmation from several sources” The Gerlach Report published Ignatova’s arrest and detention as irrefutable fact.
Editor-in-Chief Jan Faber even made an appearance on BehindMLM, claiming;
We stick to our story. Our sources are reliable.
German news outlets will report once more information will be released.
To date I’m not aware of any German news publication that has published an article on Ignatova’s alleged arrest. And as I write this, The Gerlach Report have yet to respond to confirmation Ignatova wasn’t arrested in Munich.
This appears to be strike two for The Gerlach Report, who previously published misleading reports about OneCoin’s Macau event earlier this year.
Had they been the original source for Ignatova’s Munich arrest, I wouldn’t have bothered to report it. Nbox did seem to be a credible enough publication, but I digress.
With OneCoin being one of the biggest MLM Ponzi schemes operating today, investor losses and authorities finally cracking down on those running the scam are inevitable.
OneCoin can only put off affiliate withdrawals for so long, and no matter what scheme they come up with there’s never going to be enough money to cash out OneCoin points at the represented price. Let alone enough for affiliates to recoup their initial investment.
Eventually either time or authorities will catch up with Ignatova and those she’s scammed OneCoin investors out of millions of dollars with.
Unfortunately for now, last Saturday wasn’t that day.
Obviously someone got Nbox to print it and of course the Gerlach Report jumped on board with even more outrageous claims they confirmed were true.
It felt like someone in OneCoin put together this story wanting all of us “haters” to jump onboard claiming the story was true so they could discredit us.
Considering the First Phase of the ICO is not going well, this may have been a ploy to take focus off its failure.
I wonder if we will ever know who got this published?
nbox.bg is gone… Account has been suspended by host.
Oh wow, it is too.
Domain was registered in May, 2015 by Vasil Petev.
They had up to date headlines covering Trump’s trip to Asia yesterday when I checked. Wonder what happened…
The specialist in complicated strategies, to pull the time, is Frank Ricketts. That’s how they remove their business partners.
Soon it will appear as the great “savior,” and gain time, to fool other people, to make new victims.
well, someone from onecoin must have complained, and the host has to protect itself legally, so they suspended the account.
but, as i recall, the nbox article had used a ‘question mark’ in it’s announcement that ruja was arrested.
so, they were not ‘reporting’ she was arrested, but cautiously raising the ‘question’ based on information they may have received.
if nbox issues a clarification they should be okay?
when gerlach started spewing articles about ruja’s arrest on a daily basis my BullShit antenna went up.
right now, jan faber of gerlach must be sitting with his story writing team imagining up a cover up…..
gerlach is just as bad as onecoin. one is a disgrace to journalism and the other to direct marketing. shame.
nbox opens normally for me.
NBOX.bg was definitely down, at least momentarily, but also just opened for me.
Hmmmm (??)
Can confirm as well that nbox is working for me too.
The whole story smelled fishy since the beginning. I guess probably someone just wanted to find out if Ruja is still operating in the scam, which she seems to do not anymore.
But at least we had 100% confirmation of what Gerlachreport is: a bunch of ******!
No matter what happened, I could not reach Ruja for several days now through private channels and phone numbers, feels like something IS going on.
looks like ruja’s check to ted nuyten cleared, because he’s posted an article today saying – ‘Reports about The Arrest Of OneCoin Founder Ruja Ignatova Fake News’.
his article relies on the reply of ruja’s german lawfirm Schulenberg & Schenk to a query from a blog called MLMonline.
his article doesn’t mention any clarification from anyone at onecoin head office or ruja herself.
Schulenberg & Schenk’s statement was not an ‘official’ statement, they replied to an individual query on facebook.
yet, ted nuyten who runs a supposedly ‘popular’ MLM news website, has posted an article providing clarification about rumors of ruja’s arrest, without any ‘official’ statement from the company or it’s lawyers!
he refers to rumors of ruja’s arrest as – ‘smear campaign directed against OneCoin – OneLife has reached a new low’ in an unashamed declaration of his bias.
the FAQ section of businessforhome says:
well then, why is ted nuyten ‘validating’ that rumors of ruja’s arrest are a ‘smear campaign’? is he therefore ‘validating’ that onecoin is NOT a ponzi?
just recently, even though onecoin CEO pierre arens made a public statement about dumping onecoin, ted nuyten who covers sooo much onecoin news, didn’t report it.
yet, without any official announcement from the company or it’s lawyers, he’s jumped to onecoin’s defense?
careful ted, your knickers are showing!
This really is turning into Where In The World Is Ruja Ignatova. The fact that she hasn’t been arrested only makes the story more interesting, because if so, where on earth has she been for the last few weeks?
Maybe she’s done a Lord Lucan and we’ll still be asking “whatever happened to Ruja Ignatova” 50 years from now.
Is it possible that she was arrested somewhere other than Munich Airport?
Would it be normal for someone arrested for fraud to be taken to Stadelheim, Germany’s largest prison, before their trial? That sounds more like somewhere you’d be taken after you were *convicted*. If you’ve only been arrested, wouldn’t it be more typical to be held in a local police station pending your appearance before a judge?
No new CEO yet.
So Ruja you owe your affilates some words.They have given you and others a life in luxury at least for a while.Show up as fast as possible if you can…
Hurry up!
Did you know that after almost 3 YEARS Onecoin does NOT:
1.) have a wallet
2.) have an exchange
3.) have a single known Developer
4.) Have any Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
5.) Have a single POSITIVE review in ANY tech magazine, industry periodical or respectable newspaper.
6.) can’t be traded back to any real money or cryptocurrency
7.) whitepaper
8.) blockchain
9.) Neither Onecoin not OneLife (“the fastest growing company in the world”) have:
✔ CEO
✔ CFO
✔ COO
✔ CMO
✔ CTO
✔ a single known developer (by contrast, there have been OVER 30,000 INDIVIDUAL developers, coders, chief scientists, programmers, mathematicians, etc., who’ve contributed to “Bitcoin Core.”
ALSO
Italy, India, Norway, Austria, Germany, Belize, Kazakhstan, Colombia and NUMEROUS other countries have already labeled Onecoin ILLEGAL, a pyramid scheme, or have banned them entirely.
There’s been OVER 85 ARRESTS in at least 6 countries on 3 continents of Onecoin promoters illegally selling investment or scam.
Does any of this make sense?
Ps. I have a little song for any die-hard OneCULTists: youtu.be/oy1N3ntOoNc
Tim that breaks it down pretty good.
Everybody lost money, except those who stole the money of others. Their “downline”.
Can’t win when down in Ponzi business. Worthless Ponzi points.
And people haven’t learned ANYTHING aboout the technology. All they learned is that GREED will take you nowhere, fast.
Anybody still in for another split or x2 x3 x4 of their package (investment)?
Anybody in for some dividing or multiplication by zero?
WAKE UP!
Tim, very good summary!
At least on Finnish Onecoin promo materials there used to be a claim that the algorithm of OneCoin was develeoped by five Indian mathematicians. Unnamed ofcourse. Has anyone else used this lie in their scam promotion?
@Semjon – the “5 little Indians” story goes back to late 2014, I believe, and feel out of Ruja’s lips directly.
Maybe they designed the website back then, cause the grammar/ spelling was terrible! Lol.
@Tim
Your email address is returning “no account”. There’s no email set up on the “ezcoinaccess” server. That’s why you’re getting PW problems on your end and nobody can send email to the address.
@Oz – I tried forwarding this: the email of my Attorney, directly:
Daniel De Soto desotolegal@gmail.com
I understand over the years that doing the online scams and what is good and just to make some money, you are not at risk.
the institutions sleep and do not intervene, there is no risk of arrests, there is no risk of money confiscations, perhaps authorities and organs of surveillance and banks are the most scammer of those who make these scams?
I wouldn’t let Europe being asleep at the wheel of Ponzi regulation tar the entire regulatory sector.
We’re in a transition period where regulators need to catch up with cryptocurrency. Shame it’s taking as long as it is.
the FB page ‘Ruja Ignatova – Onecoin the Future of Payments’ which i suspect is personally connected to ruja, has no fresh post since 29th oct.
her lawyers Schulenberg & Schenk apparently could not contact their own client, because they had to go the the german police and prosecutor asking uh, any chance our client is in your possession? we um, cant seem to find her?
meanwhile onecoin dimwits are so happy ruja is not arrested that they still haven’t realized she’s walked out on them.
and btw why is that rag gerlach playing dead since yesterday? they are so good at making up stories but seem to be tongue tied now. jan faber get your editorial ass over here so i can kick it!
@Oz
The SEC is probably the most proactive financial regulator in the world and it’s a mistake to assume that all regulators are like it.
In the view of the UK’s regulator, the FCA, these schemes are unregulated. I.e. not its problem. The clue’s in the name.
The most they’ll do about an unregulated investment is post a warning on their website – which potential OneCoin participants will ignore or never read.
My impression from following the OneCoin threads is that other European regulators take a similar approach to the FCA. A warning on its website, then nothing.
I’d go into more detail but the UK and European regulatory system is of little interest to most on this blog. Suffice it to say that there’s no transition taking place, and if you expect other regulators to take action against cryptocurrency scams you’ll be waiting a long time.
Surely when they hit billions of dollars in losses they’ll have to catch up?
The US has had multi-billion dollar MLM Ponzi schemes (TelexFree, Zeek Rewards).
OneCoin is probably EU’s first. When it finally collapses authorities are going to have a ton of complaints to deal with.
Just wondering, but what if she was using her married name, and not her maiden name? The only question asked was if Ruja Ignatova was arrested. Not saying she was, but wouldn’t it be ironic if she was using her married name, and that’s why there was no record.
Figured German news would have pounced on it if that was the case.
Catch up with what? Billions of dollars in losses in unregulated investments? Not their problem. The clue is in the name – “unregulated”. It’s no more their problem than the billions of dollars lost in online gambling.
The UK regulator has statutory immunity from liability for damages. I would be amazed if other European regulators are different in that regard. You can complain but it’s pissing in the wind.
From a European regulatory perspective this is fraud, which is a police matter, not a regulatory matter. And we all know how good the police are at shutting down scams.
Europe hasn’t had an MLM Ponzi the size of TelexFree hit yet. OneCoin is probably the closest they’ve seen (nowhere near $3 bill though IMO).
Regulators, even useless European ones, can’t ignore scams that big when they go under.
When the scam goes under the regulators definitely can and will ignore it. At that point it’s unambiguously a police matter.
OneCoin fell afoul of the German regulator because they were carrying on a regulated activity without authorisation (money remittance). Once the scam collapses they’ll no longer be carrying on any activity, regulated or otherwise, and it becomes the police’s problem.
There’ll be no redress scheme.
NO RUJA in sight, but a OL Newsletter though: mailchi.mp/a65c4a3592fc/jxkey6m9c9-701121?e=a0e0b3336a
Well the Onelife newsletter is pretty underwhelming and particularly considering the interest is in the whereabouts of Ruja,the unanswered questions regarding OFCs and the alleged ICO. Presumably leaderless means clueless as Sebastian Greenwood in his 30th October had no idea about the transition of the OFCs to ICO’s as the blockchain was nearly”full”.
Sounds like a pump and dump with all coins sold and no market wanting them .., Don’t worry though the price will go up shortly as the target coin price of 25 Euros was the target for year end. Don’t know who will announce it as the Sofia office looks closed so not sure who will host the Christmas Party-
Is anyone left to tell us what is going on ==put us out of our misery so we can stop believing and move on to the other 3000 altcoins which are now out there.
Decentralised and open keeps the scammers away.
@crypto kill
I have also read on the Russian blog MMPG that the Onecoin office in Sofia, Bulgaria had been abandoned and stickers removed from the Windows.
THIS IS UNCONFIRMED!
I have someone in Sofia right now whom I’m hoping I can get to take photos and look into this allegation to either confirm or deny this report.
thanks Tim.
They are really shabby so are saving hundreds while stealing milLions. They are running out of money so it will be good to publicise once confirmed -another nail in the coffin.
Do you have a clear picture of who is on the top team in OneCoin /OneLife? i saw your note saying what didn’t exist eg CTO but it would be great to state what does exist eg Dilkinska and Chris Smith.
they should not be able to hide!!!
The Sofia guys may be able to get a copy of the payroll employees from social department etc /pensions .Whilst some of them may be independents that will also mean they have been avoiding Bulgarian tax and can be reported?
Concentrate on the Principe case as that will be a great watershed for us all.
The Gerlach Report have to publish this “leaked letter” if they wish to be taken seriously:
gerlachreport.com/news/rechtsanwalt-kim-bestaetigt-ignatova-inhaftierung