5. What Dreams May Come

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Big picture of her, one of the last known sightings of her. Harley Street, the Mecca of Cosmetic Surgery. And then on the right is another picture of somebody who could be her post several surgeries. Two weeks ago we were sitting among hundreds of one coiners at a beauty pageant. And now we've been told Doctor Rouge herself might have been there. But with a very different appearance.

Opinion on it. So one is the doctor Rouge I know. The other, who is sitting at a dinner table with one coin bosses, has dyed blonde hair and significant amounts of plastic surgery. What do you think? in the first photo she's got very low eyebrows. Dr. Julian DeSilva is one of the UK's top plastic surgeons. And the a after photograph, well the eyebrows are really arched and high. Now that looks like it's been lifted.

The nose is definitely different as well. In terms of the lips, well in both photos the lips are relatively full and augmented and it looks like a person's had some filler. The cheeks and the jawline, well they're similar. But the one thing that is very difficult to change is your eyes. 'Cause your eyes are kind of set in the underlying bone. Things like the spacing of her eyes, which you can't change, well you can't see a difference with that. You know, that is within the same bullpark.

This woman is um I mean she's a multi billionaire. She's been disappeared for over two years. Money is no object. It's possible. I mean it those things could be changed. It's almost too much to believe that she's just s out in public wandering around. You know, if she looks different, then she could be out somewhere and we might find her. Stupid aren't we? Why weren't we looking out for people that might be her on we never it never crossed our mind did it?

I hope you understand the vision of this company and how Thank you. Episode 5. What dreams may come?

Another early start for us, we were up at 5K. Just arrived at Amsterdam Central to uh Uh chuck our bags in our hotel because we've got no idea what situation's gonna be. For over a month we've been trying to speak with a man called Igar Alberts. For a while he was the world's top seller of one coins.

For a long while he wouldn't answer our calls. Finally he agreed and we're off to meet him at his home in a very affluent neighbourhood on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Igor Alberts left OneCoin in January 2018. But while there he was very close to the top leaders including Rouge and her brother Constantin. And after reading the FBI report and feeling uncomfortable at Miss One Life, we weren't quite sure what we were going to find.

I cannot believe he's agreed to meet us. I'm s shocked, aren't you? I'm shocked. Slight trepidation. Yeah, got he's a multi, multi-millionaire. He's gonna have I yeah, just don't know, don't know what it's gonna be like at all. Thank you. So I can just quickly ask you about this uh This enormous bear. But things didn't turn out as expected.

Animals. Igor Alberts is larger than life in almost every single way. We have panthers, rhinos, giraffes. He's now giving us a tour of his massive garden that surrounds his massive eight story mansion. Black Aston Martin and Black Maserati are parked outside. He walks me round his light up life size fiberglass collection of zoo animals. We hebben gorilla's from Uganda. We have been. Andrea en we have been everywhere in the world. This is the house of dreams. This is what dreams may come and it.

It is a kingdom. Igor is wearing only black and gold and everything is Dolce and Gabbana. Black and gold shoes, black and gold pleated suits. Black and gold shirt, black and gold sunglasses, And he has a thick black and gold ring on. But when you look at my clothes they are disciplined. Well like your shoes for example are sort of matching a little bit. They must match with this. He sucks with his underwear, with his belt.

Clothes, everything. That's Igor's wife, Andrea Cimbala, who's originally from Italy. He has socks with pink underwear and if he dresses in pink he'll dress with pink everything. There are sorts of motivational double acts. She mouths and sometimes repeats along with what Igor say. There must be always a balance in everything. She's also a lot younger than him.

I lived in Italy and I was looking for an Italian woman. I had a woman in mind that were looking like Monica Balucci and I bought a painting. Because I had that clear. So when I go to Italy, I don't have to. I can just look at my foto. This is what I want. When I saw him, I was like, oh my goodness. Who is this crazy guy? He asked me how much money are you making? What is your age? I'm like okay, you are in Italy. Maybe don't understand. You don't ask the age.

And the money to a lady. And uh I thought he's uh quite arrogant, but anyway, the day after I saw him on stage, his was very direct completely different uh mentality than it has. This is our family tree because we I have twelve children. We have we have two together but I have a totally twelve children.

With their names emblazoned under the slogan what dreams may come. The house of dreams, because here are dreams coming true. Exactly this house was on my list. But the single richest man in the Netherlands, this guy lived here. I lived in a village close by but in a little house, you know, and every day I was running in these areas and every and I looked at all the you know. One day that's really I had nothing back then. I was completely broke. One day I will have a house like this.

And today I can say everything, but really everything, from the watch till the car, from the house till the influence that we have on the world, everything.

Came true. It's network marketing that you owe your Over a hundred million people around the world do network marketing and roughly half a million in the UK. Somebody brought you in. Make it simple, make it simple. Hey, stop, stop, stop, stop. Maybe you've already drawn it up. Yeah, two football teams. Yeah. Inside the house, Eigol tries to show us how it works. with a football analogy on a whiteboard. I'm sort of struggling to understand It's all quite hard to follow. I find the second person

Straight from But it's basically this. I pay a hundred pounds to start selling vitamin tablets to people directly. I sell a box to Georgia. And make a small cut. But then I recruit Georgia and Phil to start selling too. And I make a cut on their sales as well. They are now in what's called my downline. Now I am a network marketer. And we for each And before too long... Yeah. This is the power of exponential growth. If that split happens 25 times, everyone in the UK is selling vitamin tablets.

And me at the top, the person who started it off, will I make a cut on everything? Because there are these different levels of people, network marketing is usually called multi level marketing or MLM. MLM is not illegal. Big companies like Amway and Herbalife use MLM techniques, but it can be very controversial because usually only a tiny number of people at the top make all the money.

And it's notorious for wildly misleading promises and high-pressure targets. When there is nothing of value to sell, and all the money is made by recruiting other people to sell, it is illegal. And then it goes by another name that's more familiar, a pyramid scheme. So you've got how many line I mean, if you imagine uh this person recruits, this person recruits this person recruit I mean, how many lines down does this go for you at the moment?

Thousands of deep. Most people make very little or nothing from MLM, but those near the top can get very rich. And Igor has been near the top for years, selling things like beauty products and organic coffee. And the wealth he's made from being at the top is displayed all over his house. And that was a hang on, is that you there? Yeah.

It's me. When I was younger I had to bring the flowers around when I was twelve years old, and then I came to a house where people had the Swarovski crystals that was in a very expensive neighborhood. En ik het heel erg genoeg. En weet je wat de man me zei? When you don't know what to do with your money anymore When you don't know what to do with your money, you give it to your wife and she buys those bullshit Swarovski's.

But I said to the man, but it's beautiful. It's a dream. I will dream of having this. He said, One day, my friend, when you have enough money, you can buy it. And then at a certain moment I made a fortune and I thought it is ridiculous to spend two thousand euros on on some crystal. But on the other hand, I have enough money I can afford it. And I started to collect it. How many pieces are there in here? I have no clue.

So how successful are you compared to the rest of the network marketing world? Now there's a lot of competition in it and where do we are ranked? The number one in the world I think. The easiest rating is how much do they earn? The last uh update was that we make one point six million per month. But on the fifteenth of june they will update it. I think we go to around two million. Around then. I think uh over the last thirty one years I made over a hundred million in it.

Hundred million dollars in network markets. By two thousand and fifteen, IGA was a successful and well established multi-level marketer, working with MLM companies selling real products like Organo Gold.

And building up a huge team of sellers around him. Then he was approached by a friend with a new product to sell. One coin. They invited us to go to Dubai in May twenty fifteen. And I saw Thousands of people. I thought when they can all make so much money, it must really be something. Then I saw Dr. Rouge and she had all princesses dresses and Definitely knew what she was talking about. extremely strong in it. Worked like crazy, we made in our first month

Bang! How are you selling? What are you actually doing? That's what I don't understand. What do you mean? This is the company. Let's say that we We told to all the people Straight into this company. Random new people. These are people that you've We know. of thousands of people already. Those people are all professional One life. So this became the biggest product in network the biggest company 25 years of history. Yeah, yeah.

Dr Rouge's genius was to recognise that MLM and sellers like Iigor Albert's were the perfect vehicle to market her fake coin. People bought one coin packages and became independent marketing associates. They would then sell packages to other people and recruit them into the network, making money via commissions from the people in their downline. 40% was paid in one coin, but 60% was paid in Euros.

Onecoin spread so far and so fast because it was being marketed by established MLM sellers. People who had scant knowledge about cryptocurrencies, but knew a lot about hyping up crowds and selling dreams to people. In emails obtained by the FBI, Dr. Rouge refers to this plan as The Bitch of Wall Street meets MLM. Here's Kari Walroos, OneCoin's Europe Ambassador. How are you today? Coming onto the stage in London in 2016. We are one life! We are We are we are That's the correct answer!

And here he is again coming onto the stage in Berlin in 2014. Promoting a multi-level marketing health product called Wellstar. Good morning, Wellstar!

And here's Igar Alberts, selling one coin in 2017. And here's Igor again. In 2013 on the stage promoting Organa Gold. Nothing is impossible because today... And when people like Kari or Igor jump to a new company, they take their teams. Which are often tens or even hundreds of thousands of MLMers with them. Tim Curry, blockchain expert and one coin critic. They decided to

offer some of the biggest marketers in the MLM industry to come into one coin and recruit for'em. So it it's basically think of it as an all star soccer team or all star baseball team or whatever. And they're like, Okay, if if we're the New York Giants, we have a bigger budget than any other baseball team in the United States, right? And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna buy the biggest rookies, we're gonna take the biggest stars from some of these biggest teams.

And that's how we're gonna build this team, right? It's not That much different. You take the best talent, you pay'em enough money, and y you already know that their morals are compromised in most cases. And so it's perfect. And if they're getting a paycheck, they're happy to do it. Sellers have special names denoting their place in the one coin pyramid. When you like that Iger Alberts was right at the top.

He was a crown diamond. That's the name for anyone who can generate eight million euros worth of sales below them each month. Oh your clothes. Only your clothes part are one million insured. Oh my goodness.

All this year's old Dolchin Gabana. So these so these people that you're recruiting in early, these people are starting to make money too. They're starting to make a lot of money. Immediately. So so talk me through the sort of numbers you're dealing with now. So the first month ninety thousands. Then how quickly did that increase? After that were the hundred twenty thousand that went up in no time, in a couple of months we made a million.

It went up to two million, it went up to two point six million. When we left the company The day we resigned we made two point six million. I understood that some came in one coin and some came in commissions or a proportion of 60%? 40% were coming in coins. You could only buy coins, so you buy from people that want to sell.

Sixty percent you get in your cash account and you can send it to any bank that you want in the world. So the forty percent so when you said two point When we made a lot of money, we started to buy more coins. We invested a lot of money, millions, really millions. there is somebody else in the entire world that invested more money made a lot of money Believed in it. I did the calculation how many coins we need the richest person on the planet.

I said to Andrea, we need to build it up to 100 million coins. million of those coins. We are richer than Bill Gates. It's it's easier, it's mathematic. You thought honestly that you would one day become the richest person in the world with one coin?

The math of this is just completely ridiculous. Every minute, fifty thousand one coins are mined, right? Now the value of those at today's quote unquote price of twenty nine point nine five Euros would be one point four nine seven. A million 1.5 million euros a minute is what they're claiming, right? And per hour that's Eight eighty nine point eight five million euros.

And then per day they're creating two point one five billion Euros out of thin air, right? And so the logic of it is just ridiculous. Now if you follow how many coins had been mined for the first quote unquote blockchain and then from October first to present, it's nearing about seventy billion coins.

If we take seven seventy billion coins and multiply that by the internal price of twenty nine point nine five, you're looking at I think it's like one point eight trillion dollars or two point one trillion, which is which is greater than all of The US dollars in circulation on Earth. which is about 1.67 trillion. It's obviously ludicrous though. But the logic or lack of it isn't really the point.

This is the big secret at the heart of OneCoin. It's an old-fashioned pyramid scheme with a fake cryptocurrency as the product.

According to the authorities, something is an illegal pyramid scheme when the product being sold is valueless. To avoid the suggestion that they're an illegal pyramid scheme, OneCoin claims to be selling education packages. We have evidence that this was simply a cover. One coin promoters are often careful when they talk about how much money an investor can make. This is Dr. Rujai Gnatula. I'm sitting now in the head office. But we found a video from July 2016.

Where Dr. Rouge is promoting a new package. It is a big package called the Ultimate Package. This package is 118,000 euro and it has 1,311,000 tokens and 111. And this package will generate over two million one coins. 2 million one coins. For€118,000 an investor could purchase 2 million one coin, each worth, according to the company, almost 7 euros at that time. So do the math. Put one hundred eighteen thousand euros in and a couple of months later you will have fifteen million euros.

An almost immediate return of over 10,000%. This coin has been going through the roof like crazy. We have so many people joining us and all these new networks that come in. We have no coins left for Latin America and India, so what can we do? Dr. Rouge would frequently reinvent the basic rules of economics like this, and people didn't seem to care. We will increase the number of one coins and we will go up to 120 billion coins.

After two years of selling coins, Dr. Rouge created a new blockchain and increased the total supply of one coin from two billion coins to 120 billion coins. But what does this mean for all of you? You have coins, you have done so much, oh my god, is my coin worth more now? Is it worth less? Now every economist would say that when you increase the supply of something, the price tends to go down. But not Dr. Rouger.

So now there are more coins. Is my coin now less valuable, more valuable? What happened? If we have more coins, we can expand our brand much faster and much better. More people will know about one coin and this will strengthen the brand. So on this side, your coin will become for sure more valuable. She even doubled everyone's coins to huge applause. Why not? For you. As existing members, whatever coins you have on your account or in the mining.

If you have one thousand coins on your account and one thousand in the mining, what we will do as a company, we will double the coins on your accounts. People in the audience thought they'd just become millionaires by the click of Rouge's fingers. Thank you.

We've put our allegations to one coin. To our claim that nobody can trade one coin on an open exchange and the profits come only from commission for getting others on board, OneCoin replied, It is already untrue that OneCoin is not tradable. DealShaker is one of the major global trading platforms and has been continuously developed further by us.

The fact that cryptocurrencies operate in a highly unregulated industry and have a reputation of being risky, pyramid, or bubble presents a serious barrier for their mass scale adoption by most users and retailers. As stated many times, there are various reasons why cryptocurrencies could become the generally accepted payment means of the future. We will be returning to Dealshaker in a later episode, but are yet to see any evidence of it being a major global trading platform.

To our claim that one coin is not a cryptocurrency because outside its ecosystem it has no value and that its nominal price is not determined by supply and demand but is manipulated and set internally, they said OneCoin verifiably fulfills all criteria of the definition of a cryptocurrency, and also those of a transparent pricing that is in line with the common market. To our claim that one coin has no true verifiable blockchain, they said It is incorrect.

OneCoin has a particularly innovative system of a centralised blockchain. It has a number of significant advantages compared to other less innovative technological concepts of the decentralized blockchain. When asked for further comment, one coin told us that we had Prepared an eight-part podcast series with information provided by many haters, former employees and sanctioned IMAs for fraud or TNC violations who chase personal gain. And that for now, no further comments will be made.

We will continue to put our claims to one coin and include any responses in later episodes.

In August 2019, after we carefully put the word out in a couple of online groups, we were approached by two people who could help us make sense of how the OneCoin pyramid spread. Two OneCoin sellers based in the UK. We can't tell you their names or what rank they were, and their voices are played by actors. Whatever commission I used to get, I bought more and more packages because my belief was there. My belief was there. It would be my future. How many coins did you have?

Many millions. And each of them was worth twenty nine ninety five, so you must have been a multimillionaire. Billionaire. You're a billionaire. That's what the people believe. They believe in one coin. They left the company in spring this year after reading the FBI charges against Constantin. After really reading them. We were totally shocked. Before then we never went through the FBI documents or anything.

The problem is the OneCoin believers, they're fed so much information, I'm sure ninety nine percent of the people have never even read the report. And even if they had, they'll just say it's from the haters. I asked a question, I raised the voice, they stopped answering, and then they froze my accounts. I communicated with every single leader, told them not to promote it, nobody was listening.

We were a bunch of clowns. Seriously. Because we never used to go inside to find the truth. For the last two years you can make money in the system, but you cannot withdraw a single pence. The only possible way to get money is to bring new people and if those people buy packages. In any system, any networking system, very few people make money. How many people do you think have invested in the UK? Over seventy thousand? I I think it's more than that.

Here's a strange thing. Once we stopped recording, we left the equipment running. I've heard of one coin, it's um and one of the actors, Ick it. Started talking about one coin. The religious communities actually made a big deal of it. Um the religious leaders are saying it's it's okay certified uh from a from a religious standpoint to to invest in it. Yes, Brainwashed as a Oh god. It's it's a it's a big cult. It's a big cult.

Muslim groups in particular seem to have been affected in the UK. For Muslims there are various religious rules about investing money, mostly relating to whether an investment accrues interest which is called usury, and that's not allowed. Scholars sometimes offer guidance about how to invest in a way that's halal, meaning it's compliant with sharia, which is Islamic law.

I'm a uh Mufti Amjad Muhammad. Mufti Amjad Muhammad is a scholar from Bradford. The real kind of push for a cryptocurrency is that it's decentralized from the banks. We find within traditional Islam and historical Islam. Now gold and silver weren't controlled. anybody. You only had the gold that you had. So there's no such thing as sort of inflation or you had no you didn't have to manage your money because you weren't producing gold. It was the old so gold was finite.

With regards to Bitcoin, that was also its great kind of push, that there would be only a certain amount of cryptocurrency that could be mined, and that's all that would exist. The second uh kind of push that was made was that it's not controlled by banks because the bankers are just lining their own pockets. They have no care or interest. For the user usually was the big card that the cryptocurrencies can play with regards to Islamic finance.

gaining more than you actually gave or or or vice versa. These are this is considered as a serious issue within Islamic finance based upon the fact that this disparity and it's uh it's taking advantage of people in difficult circumstances. The only thing then would be, is it halal? If you have a few Muslims on there, I guess it helps. If you have a little certificate on there, or I guess it helps. So when we see somebody saying it's halal, then that's great. It justifies one's conscious.

So if I invite somebody in and yeah they might make a loss. Yeah that might happen. But it's halal, I'm not doing anything wrong. It's not haram, I'm not doing anything wrong. So it's once you keep repeating that mantra to yourself, then that's what happens. And guess what? One coin did have a certificate saying they were sharia compliant that was issued from Pakistan. What Sharia compliant is supposed to mean is that somebody has carried out thorough research.

All the conditions, gone through all the terms with a fine-tooth comb, there was no evidence of any research whatsoever. It was just a blank certificate saying this is okay. Amjad issued a fatwa against this, a ruling that one coin was not halal. And then within weeks the conditions which I had highlighted as being problematic changed. So clearly somebody was keeping a watching brief of of what I was doing.'Cause I only picked a couple in the in the in the initial fatwa.

However, one coin does not actually exist. So I can easily make any form of conditions for something when the actual thing does not exist. It's a fraud. I would say engaging in one coin Compensation plan is not Sharia compliant. Mufti Amjad saw how fast one coin spread within the Muslim community. I would say it is significantly high. Once it kind of gets into the community, then the

being slightly tight-knit, it's kind of like a bit like a wildfire in that it spreads very very quickly over a very short period of time. This lady got in touch with me and not only had she invested whatever little she had. She'd also invested in money from her close family members and I'm talking immediate family members. But the person who had introduced her to OneCoin was also an immediate family member. I I wouldn't be surprised if family members have not even gone to the police.

Because having this kind of family bond. They think by me doing that my cousin could go to jail or my brother could go to jail and some people have mentioned to me that their their relatives will just say to them that, Well, you know, you made a choice, I didn't force you. It stops being a kinda clinical intellectual thing and it becomes an emotional thing. Don't you trust me? Don't you believe me?

Because pyramid selling spreads through networks of people, scammers are often recruiting those closest to them. That means you can't just disappear. You're tied to the people you scammed. They know who you are. Last two or three months, what we're going through, you can't imagine. The UK whistleblowers again. Mix of text messages, phone calls. You traitor, you hater. You are the devil. They're gonna be murders and suicides.

never be blamed for believing in something No clue that it could be false. chain is there or not. Even when you would have shown me the blockchain I didn't even know what is a blockchain. I mean you you said you were very convinced. You know, meeting her persuaded you. But also but also that you still didn't know the technical details of it.

A lot of cars, you've seen the cars. I saw I've seen some of the cars. I saw uh Aston Martin. He's black, he's beautiful, he drives 330 kilometers. He's made by hand by Mr. Hartman. yeah but what engine is in it I have no clue how many horsepower does Have no clue. I have no clue. It's an Esther Martin. Is that not enough? I'm not a

Aston Martin. You just have to like it and have it in your head. But if you were gonna sell that Aston Martin, you'd probably think, I wanna double check that the engine is the right one and the I need to sell a supermarket. It's good. Yeah. I trust when I buy stuff in the supermarket Yeah. I trust that they don't sell me bullshit. I have no clue about cryptocurrency at all. Nothing. But what I saw is a lot of people that had a lot of knowledge about it.

I see those people making the money. What doubt can I have? Igor Alberts and Andreas Cimbala didn't leave OneCoin until January 2018. Three months after Dr. Rougea disappeared. They say it was after, you guessed it, numerous requests to see the blockchain which were denied.

You know, when you dream about when you think that you can make with 100 euros 1000 euros or 10,000 of course there's the risk that you can lose it as well With speculation you must always understand that you can make money and you can lose money

You know, you've got this lovely house and you've done so well and s some of that money has come from people that Maybe didn't know as much they didn't have as much information about the risk. We invested millions in it as well, eh? Did you also feel at any point some form of guilt? I mean the people that had invested in that you had recruited, some of whom did lose their money. I mean did you think about them I felt responsibility And I said it before, not guilt because I'm not sure.

I didn't join when I didn't believe. I'm pretty sure that we put more money in the network than any in the coins than anybody else. I the way you figure out responsibility uh people n have to know That you can lose as well as win and but I just wonder whether actually in some places it wasn't sold like that. It was sold as you're always gonna make money, you're always gonna keep making money. Look how brilliant the line is always going up.

When it works you bec make a fortune, but when it doesn't work you lose it. Some of the people I'm saying they they maybe didn't know as much they didn't have as much information about the risk. They weren't as confident about it. They weren't as well educated. But there are not the people that invested high amounts. They invested 100 euro, 50 euro. It was a lot of money to them. That is the risk of life.

But what would you what would you say to someone who said, But y y maybe you should have known earlier? Maybe you should have spied the side. You should have looked into it more or you should have died more than one year and a half ago it was not so many

not quite the question. Uh but it's more what what yeah, what would you say to somebody who said, You should have known, you know, you should have looked into it more, you should have researched more So someone who says that to you and they must have said that to you before, what what do you say to them? Then I asked them, Are you a victim? Why didn't you do it yourself? Who is to blame? Igor makes for a strange kind of victim sitting there in his Dolce and Gabbana suits.

But Igar Albert's story of selling cryptocurrencies isn't over just yet. You'll be meeting him again in a later episode. Jen McAdam invested€10,000 in one coin. But she also convinced her friends and family to invest 250,000 euros of their money. And after learning about how the pyramid scheme worked, there was something we had to ask her. Jen came into the studio in London on the day this series was released.

One question Jen that some people will have is were you selling packages to people that you knew? Yeah. So how much did you make from that? Over a year's period the commission was three thousand euros. sixty percent of that goes into a cash account. Forty percent of of it goes into um OneCoin takes that automatically and they say that they're Purchasing coins for you. So 1800 was what I received over that year period, which I then repurchased more OneCoin packages. Out that eighteen hundred.

You obviously had an incentive to bring people in so you could make a commission. Well initially I only wanted to invest. I believed what I was told and I pa when I spoke about it to friends. This this happens so so quickly, over a couple of months. Do I feel guilty? Of course I do. That'll never leave me. It's it's a heavy burden to bear. That's why I want answers. I would love them to be able to we'd be able to get where money back, their money back. It's a quarter of'em.

still the cryptocurrency that made you want to invest or the chance of getting commission? Legend no, it was a g it was a c it was a cryptocurrency I only wanted to invest. That's all I want. I think for most, it is the investment, it's the profit. At that time, bitcoin, you're getting told the story. Oh, remember bitcoin, it was 10 cent when it first started.

And now it's sitting uh way back in two thousand and sixteen, I think it was about four hundred and fifty. And if you say, Well, this is one coin has more members than Bitcoin, where the Bitcoin colour It's going to be the Bitcoin colour. one coin is going to be the number one cryptocurrency, the value is just going to continue. I just didn't h have the knowledge about cryptocurrency, which what I do now, I didn't have that. So it seemed it was possible.

Th there there'll probably be some people listening that will say, Oh well you were just being too greedy. Yeah. What do you say to them? I say to them that um I was going through some financial hardships.'Cause at night I used to worry I have a f a family and how can I now If something was to happen to me. How am I going to um How can I make sure they're going to be alright? So for me, when this came along, I thought, oh, my prayers have been answered.

So I don't know if people will understand that but that's the truth. I mean this podcast has only been p public knowledge for about four days. And some of the messages that you've received so far, what have you got? Um online. Yeah. Death threat. galore this week, um since he found out about the BBC podcast before I came down to London. I had police Scotland be and uh because of the death threats I was told to report it. What were people saying?

you won't be living within the next few days. Um, there was sexual abuse threats as well that I d I really I don't even want to repeat it, it's it's no nice at all. And uh that my life was was gonna end. Um I hope you enjoy lying in your bed when last night and things like this. If it sometimes I feel as though I'm in a n a nightmare that I just can't wake up from. I try to contain it because of my f my loved ones not to show them that um that I'm worried. I don't sleep, I just worry constantly.

Jen McAdam stopped promoting OneCoin in early 2017 as soon as she realised it was all a scam, and she went public about her concerns at some cost to herself. Iger Albert stopped in early 2018. Our whistleblowers were still selling one coin up to early 2019. How high up the pyramid do you go before you're no longer a victim? How long do you keep selling before you're simply a scam? With pyramid selling, I'm not sure there's a simple answer to those questions.

But at least they've all stopped now. Others in the UK, however, Have not There are people here... Still promoting an exchange where you will soon be able to trade your OneCoin for usable money. It's still growing. Even last week I saw someone bought a tycoon package. From next month or next week, there'll be a new wave in selling one coin.

And they just had an event in Bali which generated huge interest. Yeah, and they will sell more packages because now they've created a scene. We're gonna exchange. We are going to exchange. We're gonna exchange. Even yesterday in the official publication, they say the exchange.

Exchange is ready to be approved. Let's bring in new people, let's bring in more sales. There is always a reason for why the exchange hasn't happened. On ninth of january twenty seventeen it was they were waiting for the audit from the central bank. Now we have the exchange, but we need a final push. We need to sell more power packs. They give us some numbers and names of current UK promoters. One more question.

Where do you think Dr. Rouge is now? Initially Constantine used to say that she needs some rest. But that she is still operating everything from the house.

Even in December last year he said the same thing in the Paris event, publicly. We were told that for family reasons she was stepping aside, so we had to respect her privacy. But she is connected. She is helping Constantine. People believe that Dr. Rusha is running the company, but Doctor Rusha, she's like a like a queen and there'll be days when she'll come and she'll lead again. Second coming. People were giving Constantine presents to give to Rusha.

Until March we were told she was living in London. Yeah. We were given this information that she was living in the UK. She got the penthouse? Knightsbridge was the office. But she has a penthouse as well. So you were told she was living here? We were told she's here, don't worry.

Constantine said he was getting information twice a week from Rusha. Oh we don't believe that anymore now. Well what do you believe now? What I believe strongly is it is a criminal organization. We were just the workers. The problem with this company is until you step outside from it, you won't understand what's going on. You understand? Because the picture they create is so beautiful. It's a brilliant picture.

There's something strangely beautiful about the OneCoin scam. It's like the perfect scam. It combines the hype and terminology of cryptocurrencies and the hard-nosed MLM selling of people like Igor Alberts. It uses glamorous events and household brands to create the veneer of respectability and protects it with a religious-like zeal. And who could ever doubt the intentions of the trustworthy Dr. Rouge? Maybe it was too perfect.

In the Department of Justice charges against Dr. Rouge and her brother Constantin, there's an email that they say is written by Dr. Rougea to one of her senior team. I'm personally very unhappy and feel that the future, regardless of what happens with one coin, is not really an exciting one.

and nothing to be proud of. Her words are read by Decislava Stefanova. I have done many bad things in my life, many stupid things, many things that were borderline, but nothing that was I partially ashamed of, and it actually destroys part of who I am. The damage is done, I have to somehow live with it. But it is something that really upsets me. Is it possible that one coin grew faster than Dr. Rouger expected, propelled along by MLS? Amen. That she lost control.

Maybe that's why she asked Bjorn Björke in 2016 to build her a blockchain. Maybe it's not only the authorities that she's running from. We put this to Bjorn, the blockchain developer who turned down a job with OneCoin in 2016. Do you think it's possible that this? This almost ran out of her control. This got much bigger than she thought that it would.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We've talked to people that have been there from the beginning. They all say that this was a quick couple of bucks to make. This was never supposed to be a billion dollar scam. I think she started getting scared that this is this is going out of control. tried to stop Onecoin'cause they didn't want to get too big. And once OneCoin was running above uh ten million, twenty million, thirty million

Something happened where she was unable to stop it. When you talk about the amount of money that's been put into one coin, the recent number that I have is fifteen point eight billion euros. What?

But what? 15.8 billion euros. Yes. She was just the face. the network around them, as in behind them, said, No, you are gonna follow this through and you're gonna take as much money as you can. We're gonna ride this horse As long as we can. And I think she was so scared in the fall of uh twenty seventeen that she decided to to skip. They raised so much money. Fifteen point. Four or fifteen point seven billion. That is maybe an area, but only in China they raised more than ten billion.

Fifteen billion, yes. tremendously the amount you read was only in our team and we were only 10% of the total company. October 2017 over 15 billion. 15.4 billion. So it can even be way more. 15 billion is far bigger than we'd heard before. And at this stage it's impossible to know. How much of that money is with Doctor Uja? No, we have heard that she took 7-8 billion to Russia and that's how she gets immunity.

There is 4 billion uh blocked-on accounts all over the world, and there's still a big part missing. There are a lot of theories. The first theory was that she is arrested, but we couldn't figure it out. She's kidnapped. Can be that she's kidnapped. I don't know if it's true. I met the mother by the way. The mother was very nice and the mother was working for the daughter.

So the mother was, you know, when you wanted to go into the office of Dr. Rugia, in front of the door was the desk of the mother. You could not go in the office without passing the mother. I looked at many theories. And uh She must have made a deal with somebody. She's living in Russia. I have seen sometimes pictures that she holds a Russian and Ukrainian passport. I've heard from reliable sources that she travels back between uh Russia and Dubai, but you know.

You never know what is behind because when we started there were very influential people behind. Would you tell us anything about who they are? No, I cannot tell that because uh I don't want to take that risk with our lives. We've now been told that Dr. Rouge might be in the following places London, Russia, Dubai, and maybe Romania. She might also have changed her appearance. Testin two three two three testing testing testing testing is all right.

We decide it's time to call in a professional. I specialise in finding people. That is my core speciality. Outside a cafe in central London. We meet private investigator Alan McLean. Let me just talk you through the la the last known sighting and see if any of this makes sense to you. She takes a flight from Sofia to Athens.

In w October two thousand and seventeen and then suddenly she disappears and no one knows what she did once she got to Athens. What was her lifestyle? That's the most important thing of all. What was her lifestyle? Because no matter how good you are at evading anyone we will all leave a pattern. What type of food you eat, so that would determine what restaurants you went to. It's unlikely she wants to change her lifestyle. Very unlikely she wants to change her lifestyle.

I would suggest have a look at the yachts that were bought in Athens. That might be my starting point. She already had a yacht and that's what takes me towards the sea, yes? Go to Athens. That you can buy some massive yachts out there. That is the yacht place. Now we're not talking about some yacht that Robertson Crusoe had. This lady could buy a s uh you know a a ship beyond belief. What would you do? What would you do if this was your case?

What sort of techniques would you be employing? If you were paying me seventy pound an hour I could maybe start to tell you Seventy pounds an hour. That would be for you half price. Trace where she's been on that yacht that she owns. Where is her yacht based at the moment? Sozpol. Sospol. Sozopol in uh Bulgaria on the coast of Bulgaria. What you want to be trying to do is getting the tracker off that. What do you mean getting the how am I gonna get the tracker off the yacht?

It can be done. In my opinion, this is for for what it's worth. Mediterranean. She's moving around the Mediterranean. That seems very risky. That seems very close. I mean that's still with in the heart of the European Union. I live two hours away from where you are now, yes? I never heard of this woman.

I never heard of this woman. If this woman walked into here now, yeah, how many people would know she was here? We'd know. Sometimes when you're focused in an investigation, you get clouded by the fact that you don't realise that outside of there nobody knows her. You know what what what would stop her going into Monte Carlo, walking into a restaurant, having a nice meal and a nice dance and a nice going to the casino and having a night out who would know her?

She would just be another rich woman. I guess I thought because the FBI are after her. She would gravitate to a country where there's no extradition treaty, so Russia, Jebai, somewhere like that. It's possible, but when you're out at sea there's no extradition from the middle of the sea?

The only thing I would stay away from Russia is who wants to live in minus forty? Who would want to live there? The one thing that I would look at and I'll tell you this you should sort of coming to the end of this and I'll tell you something I would seriously look at. How close was she to your family before this all started? Because if she was a family person That is hard to go away.

and disassociate yourself from your family. Is she gonna be currently sitting there nervously expecting someone to find her or do you think she's just living the high life not worrying about it? No, th people after a while at the beginning should have been we'd be a bit but now She'll have got her feet under the table, there's a routine.

Now when you say about the FBI and for me, she wouldn't even be worried about the FBI investigation. She'd be more worried about journalists finding her. You're like myself, you'll give a dog a bone. Yews will be chasing this. I know you'll have a sleepless nights over this, yeah? I can assure you somebody in the FBI isn't having sleepless nights over this, but I bet you too have. I wouldn't dwell too much on the FBI because The best information is the legwork.

Get on the ground, get on the docks, get on the ports and talk to the lower level. Don't talk to people that she's probably paid off. talk to the workers there, talk to the people who've might have seen her in the cafes and the the restaurants and that. There was a reason she flew to Athens and then disappeared. There had to be somebody see her last. Somebody somebody in Athens has seen her. If I was you I'd keep on this because you're probably not as far away from it as you think.

Next time. We dig into Dr. Rouge's past. The night she disappeared. One day she was there, next day she was gone. Laptops were Papers vanished. It m made for us the impressions that that somebody tried to hide something. The factory was dead. Most of the people um just were out of work. A hundred and forty families.

And a new whistleblower steps forward. I'm probably responsible more than anybody else for keeping this alive for so long. That's something I've got to live with. Kept a lot of people believing longer than they should have. The Missing Crypto Queen was presented by the first time. It was co-written and researched by me, Jamie Bartlett, and Georgia Catt and Georgia Kat is the producer.

Philip Sellers is the editor and the amazing music you're hearing is by Phil Channel and Decislava Stefanova in the London Bulgarian Choir. It is a radio documentaries production for BBC Sounds. Thanks very much for listening and remember we want to get the word out about one concept.

So if you tell just two people to subscribe and they tell two friends to subscribe and then those four tell two people and those eight tell two people and then those sixteen tell two people and those thirty two tell. And then those sixty-four Tell two people and those a hundred and twenty-eight Tell two people. Yeah. There's another podcast I want to recommend to you. Like this one, it's about an investigation and one that is seeking your help.

It's about a woman who died in terrible circumstances in nineteen seventy, and to this day we don't know who she was. Her badly burnt body was found on a remote mountainside in Norway, and labels had been cut off some of her clothes. It's thought she used multiple identities, perhaps even she was a spy. It's called Death in Ice Valley, and it's made by our colleagues at the BBC World Service and NRK in Norway.

You know the drill. Search for Death in Ice Valley on BBC Sounds or wherever you're listening to this. We focus on the part of the internet that most people Well, it's called the dark web. Undercover in the furthest corner. Webb. US special agents are on a mission. Move in now. From the BBC world. Secrets. ¡Suscríbete! Investigations. Podcasts.