The public search for Ruja Ignatova, better known as the 'Crypto Queen', has taken a tragic turn after an investigation by Bulgarian news outlet Bird revealed documents reportedly found in the possession of a murdered Bulgarian police official that proves she was allegedly killed in 2018. 

What Happened: Ignatova was the head of the trillion-dollar OneCoin scam, accused of fleecing investors out of as much as $5 billion in 2017 before her disappearance. She was included in the FBI's ten most wanted and Europe's most wanted lists.

For the uninitiated, the promoters behind the infamous OneCoin, which was launched in 2014, duped hundreds of investors into believing that it was a mineable cryptocurrency, falsely promising a maximum supply of 120 billion coins. Once considered the next Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), OneCoin raised alarm bells among investors after they learned the scheme did not actually have a blockchain.

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According to an investigation by Bird, Police documents reveal that Ignatova was killed on the orders of a drug lord aboard his yacht. An unnamed source from the police report has indicated that the killer was an associate of Ignatova, raising speculation that they were also involved in the OneCoin scam.

In a grisly turn of events, Ignatova's body was dismembered and discarded into the Ionian Sea, a body of water between Italy and Greece in the south of the Adriatic Sea.

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Photo by OneCoin Corporation on Wikimedia Commons