6 ms·

My bet is she was a front for some Eastern EU or EEU mafia group and now rests in a concrete-filled barrel at the bottom of Black Sea, with all the money taking

by bitL 7y ago

My bet is she was a front for some Eastern EU or EEU mafia group and now rests in a concrete-filled barrel at the bottom of Black Sea, with all the money taking multiple round trips through off-shore banks, never to be found by their MLM "investors" again.

xwdv 7y ago
Was my thought as well. It’s a shame they killed her off, she seemed like a nice woman despite it all. Who knows if that kind of life was even worth it. Seems like by the time you find out, you’re already in too deep and have to keep going.
- Mar_1 7y ago
  In 2016, Ruja Ignatova and her father pleaded guilty to and were convicted on multiple fraud charges, including fraudulent accounting in order to bankrupt a German foundry for personal gain.
- thu2111 7y ago
  You don't actually know she's dead. "Disappeared" can mean a lot of different things, depending a lot on how hard people looked and the assumptions they made.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    With the number of enemies made, the fact that she stands out and the fact that she knows a lot about the higher ups the chances of her walking around free are rather low, and the chances of her sleeping with the fishes probably better than even. How she ever thought she would walk away from this all scot-free is a mystery to me.
    - Klinky 7y ago
      This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. The article speculates she's alive. The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections. Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. Is this a way of saying she's not white? That's not really a problem. In a ton of EMEA countries she'd blend right in.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        > This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. People get killed for far less. > The article speculates she's alive. And I'm speculating she isn't. > The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections. I never said she did not know what she was doing. > Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. It means that there are tons of photographs of her and she may blend in in some places but even there a little bit of reward money will almost certainly turn her up unless she goes full Osama bin Laden and we all know how that ended. True, he had more powerful enemies but she also has less powerful friends than whole nations willing to help hiding her. Hence my speculation she's no longer around.
        justliest 7y ago
        > People get killed for far less. Sincerely though, if not pop culture, what is this prediction based on? What base rate information do you have about criminals who are extrajudicially executed? What information about who in the criminal underworld knows how much are you conditioning on in order to get a distribution that integrates out to >0.5 here, as opposed to >0.9, or <0.1? Just based on what’s publicly accessible, it seems totally implausible even to put a educated guess on the odds of something like this.
        jacquesm 7y ago
        I have - or rather had - a cousin who got a bullet in the back of his head courtesy of his best friend for less than $100K. So my base rate may be a bit higher than average but it definitely isn't zero and we're talking very large amounts of money here. Let's turn that around: how many hard core criminals do you know that end up living to a ripe old age? Even Bulger didn't make it and he tried real hard. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46036058 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46036058
        Klinky 7y ago
        People get shot over things that amount to less than a minimum wage paycheck, that doesn't mean she is dead. Your example of Bulger is bad, he was 89 at the time of his death, that's 10 years older than the avg European male's lifespan. If John McAfee's still alive, she could also still be alive.
    - jeltz 7y ago
      Some people speculate that she never intended for this scam to get this big, but that she for some reason could not shut it down when it became huge (she owed shady investors too much money, she got greedy, etc).
- asveikau 7y ago
  I am all for forgiveness of people and all that. But she doesn't sound very nice from the article.
- jeltz 7y ago
  Nothing I have read about her makes her sound nice. She seems like a materialistic serial scammer.
  - TimTayshun 7y ago
    You guys need to hear this wiretap of her speaking with Gilbert Armenta, the "international money launderer" and *boyfriend. Note: Both are married to other people. And FBI arrested Armenta and made him an informant. Ruja moved into the apartment underneath him and had a hole drilled through the ceiling so she could spy on him talking with his wife. It was due to this that she discovered later that he was a mole! And within the month, she fled into oblivion. I was told by former leaders that she definitely put a lot of money into bitcoin, herself. Yet, in 2015 she told her victims that they could have their "coins frozen" (novel idea on a "blockchain," I know) if they "promoted any other projects or coins." She said that it would be as if a Coca-Cola driver was seen drinking Pepsi on the job. She was such a greedy bitch that she didn't allow her victims to even put money in any real crypto. She wanted ALL their investment. AUDIO: https://soundcloud.com/innercitypress/onecoins-ruja-ignatova-tells-armenta-to-watch-out-for-russian-guys https://soundcloud.com/innercitypress/onecoins-ruja-ignatova...
cbzbc 7y ago
I suspect that even if this isn't the way it started, this is how it ended up - probably due to a bad investment or attempted money laundering. Presumably they also have some kind of pull with the main states in which they are based which prevents prosecution/examination.
pentae 7y ago
I suspect she was in cahoots with her Father and has probably spent a small fortune on plastic surgery making herself completely unrecognisable and changed identities. Would be no problem for someone with a cool $2.5bn laying around

by bitL 7y ago

xwdv 7y ago

Was my thought as well. It’s a shame they killed her off, she seemed like a nice woman despite it all. Who knows if that kind of life was even worth it. Seems like by the time you find out, you’re already in too deep and have to keep going.

Mar_1 7y ago
In 2016, Ruja Ignatova and her father pleaded guilty to and were convicted on multiple fraud charges, including fraudulent accounting in order to bankrupt a German foundry for personal gain.
thu2111 7y ago
You don't actually know she's dead. "Disappeared" can mean a lot of different things, depending a lot on how hard people looked and the assumptions they made.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  With the number of enemies made, the fact that she stands out and the fact that she knows a lot about the higher ups the chances of her walking around free are rather low, and the chances of her sleeping with the fishes probably better than even. How she ever thought she would walk away from this all scot-free is a mystery to me.
  - Klinky 7y ago
    This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. The article speculates she's alive. The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections. Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. Is this a way of saying she's not white? That's not really a problem. In a ton of EMEA countries she'd blend right in.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      > This just seems like speculation based on watching mafia movies. People get killed for far less. > The article speculates she's alive. And I'm speculating she isn't. > The Ignatov family seems involved in various frauds, so I wouldn't view her as an innocent woman who got in too deep. She knew what she as doing and has family connections. I never said she did not know what she was doing. > Also I am not sure what "she stands out" even means. It means that there are tons of photographs of her and she may blend in in some places but even there a little bit of reward money will almost certainly turn her up unless she goes full Osama bin Laden and we all know how that ended. True, he had more powerful enemies but she also has less powerful friends than whole nations willing to help hiding her. Hence my speculation she's no longer around.
      - justliest 7y ago
        > People get killed for far less. Sincerely though, if not pop culture, what is this prediction based on? What base rate information do you have about criminals who are extrajudicially executed? What information about who in the criminal underworld knows how much are you conditioning on in order to get a distribution that integrates out to >0.5 here, as opposed to >0.9, or <0.1? Just based on what’s publicly accessible, it seems totally implausible even to put a educated guess on the odds of something like this.
        jacquesm 7y ago
        I have - or rather had - a cousin who got a bullet in the back of his head courtesy of his best friend for less than $100K. So my base rate may be a bit higher than average but it definitely isn't zero and we're talking very large amounts of money here. Let's turn that around: how many hard core criminals do you know that end up living to a ripe old age? Even Bulger didn't make it and he tried real hard. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46036058 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46036058
        Klinky 7y ago
        People get shot over things that amount to less than a minimum wage paycheck, that doesn't mean she is dead. Your example of Bulger is bad, he was 89 at the time of his death, that's 10 years older than the avg European male's lifespan. If John McAfee's still alive, she could also still be alive.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    Some people speculate that she never intended for this scam to get this big, but that she for some reason could not shut it down when it became huge (she owed shady investors too much money, she got greedy, etc).
asveikau 7y ago
I am all for forgiveness of people and all that. But she doesn't sound very nice from the article.
jeltz 7y ago
Nothing I have read about her makes her sound nice. She seems like a materialistic serial scammer.
- TimTayshun 7y ago
  You guys need to hear this wiretap of her speaking with Gilbert Armenta, the "international money launderer" and *boyfriend. Note: Both are married to other people. And FBI arrested Armenta and made him an informant. Ruja moved into the apartment underneath him and had a hole drilled through the ceiling so she could spy on him talking with his wife. It was due to this that she discovered later that he was a mole! And within the month, she fled into oblivion. I was told by former leaders that she definitely put a lot of money into bitcoin, herself. Yet, in 2015 she told her victims that they could have their "coins frozen" (novel idea on a "blockchain," I know) if they "promoted any other projects or coins." She said that it would be as if a Coca-Cola driver was seen drinking Pepsi on the job. She was such a greedy bitch that she didn't allow her victims to even put money in any real crypto. She wanted ALL their investment. AUDIO: https://soundcloud.com/innercitypress/onecoins-ruja-ignatova-tells-armenta-to-watch-out-for-russian-guys https://soundcloud.com/innercitypress/onecoins-ruja-ignatova...

cbzbc 7y ago

I suspect that even if this isn't the way it started, this is how it ended up - probably due to a bad investment or attempted money laundering. Presumably they also have some kind of pull with the main states in which they are based which prevents prosecution/examination.

pentae 7y ago

I suspect she was in cahoots with her Father and has probably spent a small fortune on plastic surgery making herself completely unrecognisable and changed identities. Would be no problem for someone with a cool $2.5bn laying around