The US Federal Police FBI has put the German-Bulgarian suspected crypto fraudster Ruja Ignatova on its list of the ten most wanted suspects.
The FBI on Thursday put a $100,000 bounty on the 42-year-old, nicknamed "Crypto Queen."
The police department warned that the inventor of the fraudulent cryptocurrency OneCoin may have armed guards or accomplices.
Possibly more than four billion dollars stolen
Target investigators from the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia had put Ignatova out for a worldwide search in May.
The 42-year-old has been in hiding since October 2017, her whereabouts are unknown.
She disappeared after a trip from the Bulgarian capital Sofia to the Greek capital Athens.
The Bulgarian-born woman with German citizenship is accused of having prompted investors around the world to invest in the actually worthless cryptocurrency.
According to US court documents, she is said to have stolen at least $3.4 billion from the crypto fraud, possibly even more than $4 billion.
Millions of investors were affected.
According to investigators, OneCoin was not based on secure and independent blockchain technology like true cryptocurrencies.
Rather, Ignatova is said to have specified the supposed, allegedly constantly increasing value of OneCoin internally.
Ignatova is being investigated in Germany for joint fraud in a particularly serious case and for money laundering.
In May, a public search for her was also shown on the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved”.