11. Operation Satellite

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Telenor, Sveriges bästa näthet OpenSignals Sverige 2025, presenteras från en minibus av ett innebanderlag på väg till bort match. Alltså nätet är ju pik riktigt sköntäckning, men det har blir lätt åksjuka för mycket skärm och så. Ring och surfa i Sveriges bästa nätenligt Open Signal 2025. Välkommen till Telenor.

Hej, välj en firma bilbyggd för nordisk klimat. Från för finns till alla våra modeller, även elektriska idas, kargo och e-transporter. Välkommen till folk en transport bilar. Hi, this is Georgia, the producer of The Missing Crypto Queen.

Before we bring you this new episode, I wanted to jump in to quickly tell you about a new podcast I've been working on, which is out now. It's called Burn Wild and is presented by Leah Satilli. For almost two years, we've been recording with one of the world's most wanted.

Fugitive environmentalists. The FBI say that he and the group he was a part of are eco-terrorists. But, as with the missing Crypto Queen, things perhaps aren't what they seem. So before we get into Crypto Queen, here's a short trailer. And listen to the end of this episode for a longer preview. How many people who have been on the FBI's most wanted list have I sat down for a podcast with the BB. For over a decade, a pair of mugshots have lived so

Side by side on the FBI's website. These individuals are considered as terrorists. In 2005, they were called the number one domestic terror threat in America. Estimates are a quarter billion dollars in damages. The cause of their alleged terrorist The environment. Our purpose was direct action to disrupt environmental destruction. How far is too far to go? Two. Burn Wild. Find us now on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Quick warning before we begin, this episode contains strong language. and in the world. Dr. Rouger is promoting OneCoin to a packed stadium in Macau, China. Next year will be the most exciting year in our history. OneCoin is in full swing. Tens of millions are being invested every week. It's just a few months before Dr. Rouge aboards a Ryanair flight to Athens and vanishes.

But a few weeks earlier, a very different sort of meeting was also taking place about Dr Rouge's revolutionary cryptocurrency. In March 2017, 19 officials are taking their seats in a large meeting room at Europol headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. They're here to discuss Operation Satellite. Operation Satellite is the codename for the top secret international police investigation into OneCoin and Rusia coordinated by Europol.

The FBI, the US Department of Justice, the New York District Attorney and police officers from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Dubai and Bulgaria are planning how to take one coin down. Many witnesses don't want to make statements at the police. They believe in one coin and see a danger for the situation. When they give a statement. Each one takes it in turn to share the state of their investigations into Dr. Rouge, her associate.

and OneCoin. Investigation to date. One, financial analysis and money tracing. It turns out the FBI has been investigating OneCoin for over a year by this point and has already infiltrated the company. High place confidential informant. three. Undercover operation. The Bulgarian police tells the group Millions of euros has ended up in real estate in Sophia. The UK City of London police has two officers present.

They've been busy too, having recently seized tens of millions of pounds connected to one coin. But unsurprisingly, no response. What you've just heard was based on presentations given in the Writing voiced by actors. In the months leading up to Dr. Rouge disappearing, At least five different police forces were secretly investigating OneCoin and Rouge, and had detailed information on what was really going on behind the glitzy events and promotional videos.

They seemed so close to shutting it all down and arresting Doctor Rouja. So what happened? Far from being top secret, we now believe that Dr. Rouge knew all about this Europol meeting and at least one other within days of them taking place. because someone, maybe someone present at that meeting, was leaking everything to her, helping her stay one step ahead of the authorities. And the reason you're hearing about these meetings is because someone has leaked them to us too.

Who was helping Dr. Rougea? And are they still helping her now? This is the Missing Crypto Queen. Episode 11. Operation Satellite. We've tried to contact the FBI numerous times over the last Trying to get an interview. We never got anywhere. But after she was placed on the top 10 most wanted fugitives list, we upped our efforts. We wanted to know whether her being placed on that list was a step closer to her being found.

And after a lot of pestering, one of the agents responsible agreed to talk. The top ten most wanted lists, you know, was created by Director Hoover Here are kind of the most violent, most uh dangerous criminals we're looking for. This is FBI special agent Paul Roberts. And it has morphed into you know just the the folks that we're looking for the most, the folks that had major roles in major I mean folks that have been on this list include

Osama bin Laden, El Chapo, and now we have a white colour criminal and only the eleventh woman to ever be on the list. Paul's got form in this world. whose decades long Ponzi scheme scammed even more money from investors than Doctor Rouger. Obviously we don't expect the FBI to tell the BBC exactly what they know, but I'm wondering what we should read into Dr. Rouge being added to that list.

Does this mean that you believe her to be alive? We have no information to counter that, so we are operating under the assumption that she is still alive. Paul tells us that one of the reasons Dr. Rouge was added was because they think the public can help.

Even that could be a clue for us. The public being in a good position now means something more. For example, that it is known She is traveling, it's known that she's out there, it's known that she is moving around, and that's why the public are in a position to spot her. I don't know that I would say that we have definitive information that she's out there and traveling. Um we know that, you know, she has traveled in the past. We also know that, you know, if someone goes into hiding, you know

After five years she get a little surcrazy. Obviously she stole quite a bit of money and sh she's going to want to spend that. I mean why why?

you do you steal that much? You don't want to just stuff it under your mattress and just hang out there and say, hey, I have four billion dollars under my mattress. That's no fun. You want to go out there and use it. So you know, is she out there making large purchases? Is she You know, going to to restaurants, some seeing her going through airports, going through utilizing marinas or yachts.

You know, any of those things. Are we to read anything into the languages that this FBI notice has been put out into Russian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, German, Arabic, are they countries of particular interest? Well, those are countries that she has known ties to. We know that she has had, you know, financial ties, personal ties or travel ties.

those countries. You know, I I think we even mentioned in the the announcement that it's more likely she has that support network and that infrastructure already set up there. So those would be places we might see her go where she could have a safe haven.

Places like Dubai. Last episode we found a mansion owned by OneCoin's co-founder Sebastian Greenwood. Rouge's brother Constantin posted a selfie which we geolocated to the property in an exclusive neighbourhood.

So we asked Paul about it. I don't know whether you've seen that or whether you've looked into the possibility of her staying in particular properties in Dubai. Are you are you able to to comment at all on the p the the the the Dubai mansion theory, I suppose that we're calling it, that she may have been there for some time, although probably not any longer.

So two things I can say about that. First, you know, we have you know said in our public statements that we do believe she has ties to Dubai historically. So, you know, the the idea that she would have a place in Dubai would not be, you know, beyond the the realm of possibility.

The second thing that I will say is in any investigation that we are conducting, especially in the financial crime area, you know, we are constantly looking to locate assets that people have have purchased through their illicitly gotten gained. And so, you know, locating these properties across the world is a big piece of our investigation so we can get those funds back to the victim.

Victims like Esther in the US, who you heard in the last episode, or Jen in Glasgow and Daniel in Uganda, who you heard in the last season. Paul told us that it took his team years, but they ended up tracking down eighty-five cents of every dollar Bernie Madoff stole. That's encouraging.

Especially because we've carried on digging into that Dubai property. I can't say too much right now, but we have uncovered some more possible connections to OneCoin and we should be able to update you in the next episode. What we really want though is any information, no matter how small, about Rouge's disappearance.

Can I just turn a little bit to the nature of her disappearance? You've mentioned both in various uh court documents and and on the notice that the Ryanair flight on the twenty fifth of october twenty seventeen was the last known movement. How confident are you that that that she did indeed take that flight? We are very confident that that she was actually on that flight and we have some pretty definitive reporting.

but getting into the details of what specifically leads us to that is something that I can't divulge at this time. And to be honest, a lot of Paul's answers about this Went a similar way. So how how how active would you say the investigation is now? I can't say too much about what we have and I can't divulge it. I can't comment on that. Since it is an active investigation, we are continuing to receive information about all aspects of this.

You're gonna have to move into politics after this with an answer like that. Okay, yeah, I thought you'd say that.

And there was something else that's often been rumored about doctor Rouge. That she was being protected by powerful people. Dangerous people. Someone who steals four billion dollars has a great ability to influence people to get information too. There are known organized crime groups that she has been affiliated with, without getting into specifics on those, you know, we we do believe that they are involved in

you know, part of this scheme and and especially in some protection of her and some of the other co-conspirators. You know, obviously, you know, when you're dealing with you know organized crime groups, they can tend to have connections to multiple levels and multiple people within It it certainly was something that factored into our investigation and frankly factored into our our reasoning behind getting her on this top ten list.

What what do you mean factored into your decision to get her on the top ten list? It's not just a a financial crime. You know, she she has these organized crime connections and potential that you know, information about her could lead to information about some of these other organized crimes.

So it's something that we're gonna want to continue to pursue because, you know, someone like Rougea and and someone like most international criminals, they don't operate in their own little bubble. They have ties to multiple other things that we are gonna have in I see. Is it your belief that they were involved in her disappearance and maybe still involved in her ongoing disappearance?

I I think it's certainly possible. You know, a as I said, you know, her historical ties are going to be what we believe her current ties are because she has those already maintained. So it is certainly possible that some of these groups may still be involved with her protection and and her Uh I I'll run this by you but you're probably I I'm sure you're not gonna answer, but th one of the questions that's always been on my mind is

And it's partly because people always ask me because it's their th pet theory. They say, Oh, it's people behind Rouge, people above Rouge. She was just the front. really this whole thing was probably started off by organized crime groups and they used her as a puppet. And my theory is um More like she started this off as a business and was essentially dragged into that world. I'm sure you're not gonna answer.

But is there any evidence that those organised crime groups may have been involved from the very beginning, or is my sort of reading of it more in line with your thinking? Jamie, that is a fantastic question that we would love to ask Marouja if we can ever get our hands on her. I could be way off because I've never interviewed an FBI agent before. And obviously there's a lot that Paul's not telling me because he doesn't want to compromise the investigation.

But reading between the lines, here's what I take from Paul. The FBI know Dr. Rouge is alive, but they don't know exactly where she is. aforementioned shops and ports, which makes me think that she's probably moving around. And she's likely being protected by some shadowy people. from the sounds of it, organise crime who've helped her in the past.

We've long suspected that, and if I'm perfectly honest, I always half hoped that it wasn't true, because it just makes the story feel a little bit more dangerous. This is the first time really that it's been more or less confirmed.

Just jump out. Interviewing an FBI agent wasn't the only first for me this year. There's no police anywhere. Because a few days before that, one morning in August, Rob and I were in France, this time interviewing someone under house arrest. Number something else I'd never done. It's another member of Rouge's inner circle. who the FBI are currently trying to extradite for his alleged role in one coin on money laundering and fraud charges.

So we just arrived. We just arrived at uh at Frank Schneider's village. You heard a bit from Frank Schneider at the end of the last episode. But Rouge's trusted advisor and former top spy. Told us a lot more. Frank asked us not to reveal too much about where he lives. So let's just say it's a quiet village somewhere in France. Tastefully decorated, with lots of books, and a well-stocked kitchen. As I walked through his hallway. I spot a small figurine. 007 car.

I've never really met anyone that's been in quite the situation you're in. Well, um neither had I before. Um so um Now, however, this pleasant home is Frank's prison. He's under house arrest while he appeals the FBI's extradition request. The tag he wears around his ankle prevents him from going past his front gate. Look, it's I think it is comparable to um being told that you have a very serious illness.

And so you don't really focus on the end, but you focus on the next day. Um there is a lot of work to be done. Um I have French lawyers, I have Luxembourg lawyers. But even with his tag, Frank is well spoken, calm and considered. I can see why Rougea trusted him. I liked her. You know, I didn't I d I didn't dislike her at all. I I f I liked her there was

you mean a lot of description about her how harsh she is, how uh unfriendly she was, how brutal she could be, how direct she could be. But I kind of got on. I I I didn't disturb me. I found that rather entertaining really more than anything else. It felt that she was n not such a nasty person there anyway. Uh I think she did like you from every everyone tells me. Is that fair? I we got on, yeah. Yes.

Yeah we did we did we we we did, yes. She had everything in place, she was uh she had lawyers and so on. She didn't fear, she'd never expressed any fear. That would drive her to run from anything. And then, as you heard in the last episode, Frank may have been the last person to speak to Rouge. Georgia, montage, please. She announced that she had to go on a trip. She called me and she said, Hi, everything's fine, I'm in Athens.

her bodyguard told her that he was given instructions to leave and travel back to Sofia. Ticket to fly to Thessaloniki. I said, Well, I thought you were the boss. She sort of said, Yes, I I always thought I'm the boss too, but Eh, he's gone. And she was in Thessaloniki. She said nobody was waiting for her. She got a text saying that some people will arrive, they are delayed. She called and she was in a car. She said that she was on the way back to Bulgaria.

She asked at the driver um where she was. She told me she was about two, two and a half hours from Sofia. I only got one text in English that said home safe. I only spoke German to her, so I found this home safe. immediately slightly bizarre. And that was the last I ever received. I believe that she's not missing, um that that whatever's happened to her, I feel that that that it's not under her control.

We asked Frank if he could verify any of this trip. Did he still have any messages from Rouge? Was there any evidence of her being in these places like travel records or CCTV footage? In short, The answer was no. But he did tell us more about why he thinks Rougea disappeared when she did, and more importantly, who he believes helped her. She explained that according to what she was told, Germany had issued a mutual legal assistance request.

to Bulgaria and she was told that it was an imminent search of her premises and her offices and possibly also interviewing her and that her contacts, whoever they were, didn't want her in the country when these raids and searches were carried out. I asked her, Why do you have to go? You are in your in your country. That you control, that you have um access to, that you you know you feel safe in. Why are you leaving the country?

It wasn't clear she didn't have a clear answer, but when I pushed her And I pushed her over and over again. She tended to explode. She said, Well Frank, you don't understand. You you have to understand that I have to do what certain people tell me to do. And so I said to you I don't know who they I have no idea. Her contacts, the people who told her I don't know who they are. I r I have no idea.

Frank, like everyone else, claims he doesn't know where Rouge is. And he doesn't know what she did after Thessaloniki. He says he even hired a private investigator who thought she might have fled to northern Cyprus. But there was nothing conclusive. If I knew where Rougea was, you know, this would be you know one of my Trump cards. y d there was nothing that she wouldn't have mentioned or said or even if she did want to disappear, she would have told me about it. And she didn't.

One thing that's bugged me about this whole story is why so many apparently smart people worked for Doctor Rouge and OneCoin. Now I can understand why investors were involved. They were driven by the fear of missing out, by the promise of getting rich. But doctor Rouger was also surrounded by top advisers, financiers, lawyers, PR companies. Frank was a top European spy, well skilled in spotting deception.

And yet he worked for Dr. Rouge right up until she vanished. So I had to ask why. Why didn't he spot this sooner? Investments are always something which is which is true or untrue or you believe in or you don't believe in. And so here

You know, the business model to this day and I have read your book and I've listened to it. I I sorry, you you say that I am a bright person. I am, I admit, too stupid to understand this business model. I don't understand This business model I I'm too stupid to understand cryptocurrency. I believe that in five years or ten years from now nobody will talk about the cryptocurrency anymore.

We will talk about the crypto bubble just we spoke about the dots. If it's that bad, if it's that risky and you don't understand it. It's a question I ask everyone. I asked Igor Alberts that he said I didn't understand any of it and I said So why were you selling it to people? That's the question you'd you weren't selling it, but you were representing the company working with her. I mean, look what's happened to you since.

Do you not regret having I mean what should you have done? What did you miss? Of course I regret what did you miss? What did you not see? Of course I regret, Jamie. Of course I would not take on that client. Of course. This is would have should have stuff. Of course I would not take on that client with hindsight knowing what I know.

Of course I wouldn't have what did I miss? Look, what did what did what did I miss? What did three million people miss? How arrogant would I be to say that those fifteen thousand people or eight thousand people in Wembley Arena were all stupid? And all missed something. Three million people missed it and nobody that these eight thousand people that also pay. W w when she stands on stage at Wembley Arena and says

I'm gonna double everyone's coin in the roof. Forget the tech, forget what how blockchain works. I'm gonna double everybody's coins. I'm gonna increase the supply of one coin by a factor of fifty, and yet the price is going to remain unchanged. Did you not think Hang on a minute. There is something seriously wrong with this thing. If you would have just said this in Chinese, I wouldn't understand it more than what you've just said. This isn't about the tech, this is just common sense.

I d I drank. Common sense. This woman was able to persuade millions of people. and she persuaded me, she sold me herself. She sold me on the day and throughout the days and throughout the weeks and throughout the time the months that followed, she sold me herself. I bought into that. I feel like I've heard this answer a hundred times. I believed it.

Rouge was brilliant, and the technology, well, it was too complicated for me. But the things wrong about OneCoin were often just common sense. The technology was just a distraction. Like the investors, maybe Frank wanted to believe. Rougea was also a well paying client. It's hard to know what to make of him.

I wonder if he's telling us everything. He's clearly smart, and he has a lot to lose. But it does seem plausible to me that Frank is telling the truth about the people above her helping her, or even forcing her, to disappear. And according to Frank, that's not all these mysterious contacts did. She had enough connections to get pre warnings about various law enforcement activities that were going on. So concretely when

the Bulgarians uh participated at certain Europol uh meetings. It it only took hours for her I can't tell you exactly who gave her those informations. I know that she got those informations and I can only deduct product that it came from. The circles were That she was in and the connections that she had through a variety of of influential um uh personalities. Do you know anything about those Bulgarian contacts? I mean how networked she was there, what sort of people

Um, were helping her in Bulgaria? That's a question we've all got, Frank. Everyone's had this question from the beginning. And I think you need to start looking at the very, very, very top um of that country. And he gave us something he said would help. But I do have the documents and I have them here and I give them to you. A memory stick, which he says has the answers.

As Rob and I hurtle along the motorway to catch our flight home, who's given us this memory stick, the significance of that memory stick starts to dawn on us. We've gotta see what's on that. Um very bizarre being given a memory stick by someone under house arrest with you know vital documents on. If maybe in there there's something quite important. When we get back to London we hand the memory stick to BBC IT specialists who make sure there isn't any kind of virus on there.

When they're done, Georgia Rob and I meet up again to see what we've got. Oh, you've got that annoying A on, that's why. That A it like keeps flicking to that bit. Is that what that is? Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Oh my god, that saved me so much time. It's really strange. The first thing we find is hours of strange recordings of Doctor Rouge talking on the phone. Space.

That's probably from her consulting days. It seems like the recordings have been made by her just days before she vanished. It's just strange though. We've heard a lot of Doctor Rougea on stage or in promotional videos on YouTube. But never anything like this. These are intimate recordings, personal. It's Rouge talking, not the Crypto Queen. All of the calls are to one man. Gilbert, our mentor.

Sad. An American financier in his fifties. Now in the months before she went on the run, Rouge was in a romantic relationship with Gilbert, who was also helping her move money. The pair were reportedly thinking of moving in together. But around four weeks before she disappeared, Gilbert our mentor was arrested by the FBI and became an informant. But people are surprisingly good at acting, aren't they? Under the FBI's instructions, Gilbert started recording all his phone calls with Rouge.

It sounds like he was pretending that he was being investigated by the American IRS, that's the Inland Revenue Service, but it was nothing to do with Rouge. That seems to be his cover story, but little known to the FBI, Rouge had figured out what Gilbert was doing. If we l can we listen to that clip as well? These audiophiles seem to be Rouge recording her side of the phone calls to Gilbert.

Right up until the twenty fourth of October, the day before she took that Ryan air flight to Athens. Shall we play? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really worry about you, like Is there anything that you can tell me or whatever? I don't know. Are you okay? I'm okay. I'm d I'm not I'm not uh Why was she recording these calls? Maybe to try to figure out what Gilbert was up to. Maybe in case she ever ended up in court. I don't believe him. I don't believe anybody.

You know, it's just like Rob Georgia and I listened to the recordings over and over. Trying to figure out if they can tell us anything about Rouge's plans or her state of mind. Looking for clues that might help us. The impression that she's sort of pretty I think she already suspects You know what my opinion on things like this is it's very very clear

You know, if you have nothing to hide, whatever information they have access to, it's okay. It's exactly what what I've been telling you. Even if people had access to my mail, to my office, to whatever. I am very firmly not only believing I know it because all of our lawyers, all of our people confirm that we have done nothing wrong. Well, I mean she definitely knows she's being recorded.

Yeah. Doesn't she? I've done nothing wrong. It's a bit like when your boss walks in and you're on the phone and then you're like, Yeah, everything's going really well, isn't it? Like This whole investigation is about us. Maybe for them also it's time to talk to my lawyer, to whoever. Like we are not invisible. We are actually very, very easy to read.

So if somebody wants to talk, they are fucking welcome to come and talk to him. That's it. We've listened to nearly three hours of these conversations. Most of it is unconnected to one coin, but occasionally it does come up. Rod O C up. For for the last two, three weeks. They asked me what our relationship was. We provided a contractual relationship.

The only uh question came up is, you know, how long the relationship lasts, etcetera. Other than that, no. I think relationship we speak business relationship, right? This is business relationships, yes. As opposed to personal. Personal, yeah, personal, yeah. It's a strange dance there. Gilbert recording Rouger. Rouge recording Gilbert.

So it's hard to know what to believe because both Gilbert and Rouge are lying to each other, playing out a role. But there are snippets that give us new insight into her personality. And even though we know what she's done, it does kinda make us laugh. Wait a second, let me try to be understanding, girlfriend. Uh failed. How's that? Oh I cannot be understanding girlfriend. Fuck. I hope I have some other qualities. You know what comes next? Me cooking for you or what? Fuck.

Oh my god, she killed Gilbert! Oh my god, she killed Gilbert! Oh no! Sorry, baby! She just having listened to a lot of this she's she's definitely I've I've seen a different side to her. She's a lot funnier. Yeah. She's a lot um more personable. Irreverent, messing around, joking. A bit spiky as well, yeah. A bit kind of I can see people would have liked her uh as a person as well. Yeah. Like it's not the crypto queen on stage.

It's another side of her that she probably used to charm her advisers, to charm her top staff.

To charm people like Frank perhaps. But there's a lot more than audio files. There are dozens and dozens of files, contracts, legal opinions, bank records, internal emails. We're still working through them. But the most significant files are restricted and confidential police documents taken from Europol meetings about OneCoin that took place in late 2016 and early 2017.

Detailed minutes, attendee lists, and confidential UK, American, German, Bulgarian, and Dutch PowerPoint slides about Dr. Rouge, about her money, and about her associates. But that's the one the PowerPoint slide, Operation Satellite with the City of London Police, this is a presentation of of their investigation that they're presenting to Europol.

Holy shit. So this is City of London Police's PowerPoint slides about OneCoin. This is the US presentation, right? So she'd got the US So this is in the twenty seventeen meeting and what we're looking at is money laundering diagram. Overview of the investigation into OneCoin. Major Economic Crimes Bureau opened grand jury investigations sharing the City of London police. They were all over it and she knew it.

No wonder Rouge seemed calm all the time. No wonder she sounded so confident on those calls just a week before her disappearance. Because she knew all along the state of police investigations into her. She knew she was being laid out. who was looking at her, what they knew and what their plans were. So I wasn't there when you were obviously with Frank. So

What did you how did he say this he's got this? Frank gives us this memory stick and Frank says all these police files, all the stuff about their ongoing investigations and what they know, Rouge knew as well. was being given them and it was Bulgarian officials who were giving them to her. What he's saying is Europol meetings about this investigation into one coin the meeting notes, the PowerPoint slides, everything was ending up with Rougea. So she knew what they knew.

Now Frank said came out of there on a memory stick out of the present out of the Europol meeting somehow. Rob, is there anything we can say about the actual files,'cause obviously these files contain like metadata. They contain data about when things are saved and when they're edited and stuff like that. So can we look at that in case that gives us anything?

Yeah, we can have a look at the the metadata. And the metadata is like data about the data, so it tells you just a bit more about when it was saved and who by and who made it and that kind of stuff. Yeah, and this is the German one and we can see that they were the meeting. But what Frank has suggested to us is that that person was at the time a member of staff, the part of the Bulgarian government that that had officials at this meeting. Um we've

spoken to people at the BBC that you know, IT specialists that look at this kind of thing and and we're gonna try and find out what we can and and and and we're still in the middle of that process. But in a nutshell we shouldn't see it as conclusive. It's not conclusive, but it's probably the most likely way that this information has got to Terouja.

We asked Europol and all of the police forces that attended the leaked meetings about how documents may have been leaked. None of them would confirm how the information got out. German authorities told us No position is taken from here on internal police documents that may have become known to the public. The City of London police didn't respond directly about the leak. But in a statement, Detective Inspector Paul Curtis told us that The City of London Police

concluded its investigation into alleged suspects linked to OneCoin in the UK in September 2019. Three individuals were arrested in relation to this investigation, but no charges were brought against those arrested by the City of London police. From the Netherlands, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, that's the agency responsible for investigating financial crimes, told us that they do not know how the presentation came into the possession of Dr. Rujia Ignateva.

Do not know who was responsible for this leap. Have reported this leak to the to our business security officer. Europol asked for more details on the leak, but told us that Europol is connected with over 2,500 competent law enforcement authorities. The FBI did not comment. We did not hear back from the US Department of Justice, the New York District Attorney, Dubai, or Bulgarian authorities. Last week, Frank lost his appeal against extradition to the U.S.

It looks likely that he'll be facing justice in New York. The question we want to answer now is who was leaking all this stuff to her? More importantly, are they still helping her now? Hey. Oh hey. Nikolai, are you happy for us to record this? Okay, sure, of course. Good to speak to you again.

So we called up an old contact of the series Bulgarian journalist Nikolai Stoyanov, who helped us back in Sophia and Sozopol way back in episode two and told him what we'd found out from the files that Frank gave us. Well something. Yeah it seems like the the likeliest possibility of the leak is that it leaked from Bulgaria anyway. So it's uh Uh not a huge surprise, but it would be really sad to confirm it here from Bulgarian point of view of course.

The second thing really is whether you'd be open to us coming back to Bulgaria and basically showing you what we've got. talking you through what we've got and whether between us we can figure this out. I'll be happy to to join you and Okay, let's let's set it up.

Remember, if you have information about Dr. Rouge you would like to share with us, you can reach us at cryptoqueen at bbc.co.uk. We'll be able to buy you those beers I owe you as well. Yeah, not until I've done the job, probably because uh after several beers we'll start to see links and people everywhere. Episode 12 will be out soon. I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly when right now because this is an unfolding investigation, but we think it will be ready by the end of November.

Okay, and then I'll just read the end thing, shall I? And live. The Missing Crypto Queen was presented by me, Jamie Bartlett. It was written by me, Georgia Catt, and Rob Byrne. The producers were Georgia Catt and Rob Byrne. The commissioner is Dylan Haskins, the series editor is Philip Sellers. It's a BBC Documentaries production for BBC Sounds and BBC Five Live. Mick is my field channel and Desislava Stefanova and the London Bulgarian choir.

I could. What was wrong with that? Are you serious? No, do you think that's too too much? You did tell me to add lib. One final thing. The official BBC series book, The Missing Crypto Queen, written by me, Jamie Bartlett, delves even further into the story of the rise, disappearance, and fall of Dr. Rouger Ignatova. And it's out now.

While you're waiting for the next episode of The Missing Crypto Queen, which we are hard at work on right now, um there's another podcast I'd love for you to dip into. Um another story where as you peel back the layers, a bit like with a missing crypto queen, nothing is quite what it seems. It's called Burnwild, it's produced by me and presented by a journalist called Leah Satili. So please search and subscribe to Burnwild now.

And it's brilliant. Oh, thanks mate. It's really good. Hang on, hang on. Have you even said what the podcast Burnwild is about? What I'm I'm really bad at doing this. So here's a little taster. How many people who have been on the FBI's most wanted list have ever sat down for a podcast with the BBC? I think about like how many people have been murdered, how many people have been brutally tortured. How did I get on the most wanted people?

For over a decade, a pair of mugshots have lived side by side on the FBI's website, on its list of America's most wanted domestic terrorists. The FBI is offering a reward of up to$50,000. For information leading to the arrest of each of these The US government says they were a part of a movement whose reign of intimidation. Was so great that in two thousand five called the number one domestic terror threat in America. Their names are not. And Josephine. The environment.

And now, one of them has been caught. And from the moment they started like we're gonna put you in prison. Well, that was pretty serious and it hasn't really relented any. I'm Leah Satili, and for the past eighteen months, as just Goes through the court. I've been trying to understand who the two fugitive egoterists really are, beyond those mugshots. Oh, I I think they'd be heroes. And what the truth is about a group known as the Earth Liberation Front.

Answering it will take us into radical activist communities past and present on both sides of the Atlantic. How do you deal with these massive like environmental problems? You know, it's why I thought it was necessary. You know, it was necessary to take such drastic action. In my work on extremism, I've covered a lot of stories about the far right, why people resort to violence, commit actions that leave people dead, and how society responds to that.

In this story, it doesn't quite fit that mold. The terrorist label being applied to activists who very explicitly take kind of extreme measures to ensure that no one is injured. I think it reveals the priorities of our government. To the authorities, those two fugitives and the group they were a part of are violent extremists. I think it uh would have continued to escalate. To their supporters, they're warriors. Well, all of us were hearing about what was happening.

A lot of us were excited about People will take away very different things You could have been blown apart, you know, I mean for Pizza Wood. But where you sit on what they did isn't a question of what happened in the past. No matter how long this takes, we're gonna stop the Dakota. Huge plumes of smoke rose above London as grass fires in the

Last year the temperatures got to 115 degrees. A bunch of farm workers here died. So this is the thing, right? They didn't die, they were killed. There's a real biting sense at the minute that things are reaching ahead. At the heart of this story is a question being asked again. Right now. Whatever is necessary to do. You know, and if it's not now, then it's when. They tried to destroy our lives. That's what they accomplished. Burn Wild on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

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