6. The Überflieger

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Last week, Alan the private investigator told us that to work out where Doctor Rouge is now, we need to find out what sort of person she is. We need to look into her background. Ten past eight in the morning. We're already on board a very early flight to Munich. Sometimes your past gives away clues about your future. A few years ago she was involved we don't know exactly yet but involved with her father buying up some factory in southern Germany.

And we've managed to track down somebody who was working at the factories. Can give us shine a bit of a light on her before she was Doctor Rujia, the visionary crypto queen. We've come to southern Germany to the small picturesque town of Waltenhoffen to meet Carlos and Sebastian who are union reps for the factories here. Hey. Oh Carlos, lovely to you.

Hi George, nice to meet you. One of the factories they represent was called the Waltenhoffen Guswerks. We can't wait to talk to you about this. We're really excited. Okay. Yeah, because Some days at the morning I think about her under the shower. Think about ah about Ria Ignatura. to destroy the working place and leave. Yeah. She's putting on the same show she put on here seven eight years ago. She's appearing like The big savior. Just the way she appeared eighties ago here in Wagner.

It's starting again. Episode 6. The Uberflieger. The people from this area are called Schwaben. People in Berlin say, Well, you're a Schwabe. They mean you're just too organized. You're too clean. You're too too German, basically. People here don't talk too much, but they are kind people. Quite a bit of cliche the work in this factory. The people put raw iron into big blast furnaces. And they cast the metal. The hot glowing iron comes out at the bottom of the blast furnace.

Then they have this whole protection gear like from the Terminator 2 if you know that movie. The end scene, that pretty much describes the the factory. It's very important to to tell about something to people in this factory. They are proud workers. Very uh special people in this factory. Because the job in this factory is very hard. It's very hot, you don't know the clean ground.

And maybe they work there because the qualification to make this job. It's not very high. It's very hard to work but the people have um a great heart. How many people were working at the factory in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine? One hundred and fourteen.

One hundred and forty. And are they all from this neighborhood? They are all from this area. They are local people and they worked there for a long time, for many years, and the fathers before In 2009, five years before OneCoin started, Waltenhoffen Guswerks was looking for a new owner. It was well known in the area for its high-quality industrial moulds, and there were several possible buyers. But one stood out.

A businesswoman with an impeccable C V. So when did you first hear that name, Rujia Ignatova? Two thousand nine. I have to talk with her. She told Carlos she had secured a large bank loan and was prepared to buy the factory. really, really convincing. She was eloquent, she was well spoken, she came to Carlos and she convinced him from the beginning that she had the best intentions with

this factory. Tell me a bit more about the first time you spoke to her. Was it in person or was it over the phone? In person. What did she look like? Like a p like a business woman. I look like a business woman. The clothes are very fine clothes. Open hairs, long hairs, black colour. Red lipstick. Yeah. I remember exactly. How about the father? What was he how did he look and how did he sound? Uh it's it sounds like a metal worker and he looks like a metal worker.

Her father has a background actually working in foundries. He's uh a working man. Uh we we need something you know about the the metalwork, that was the father, and I need a person for the financial things, and that was the daughter. So for me it was the perfect person. So when she leaves the room after your first meeting, what are you feeling then? I'm happy. I'm happy about the people and I think okay, let's go.

First year we didn't have a single reason to suspend. Rouge was born in Bulgaria, but at the age of 8 or 9, around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ignatov family moved to southern Germany. They settled in a small town called Schramberg, which was about a hundred kilometers west of Waltenhofen. Martin Himmerhiber, hello? Martin. Hi Martin. Martin Himmerhiber is a local journalist from Schramberg. City Council.

comes up. Earlier this year I got a hint that there are two super super super thieves of money worldwide back for about 10 years. When Konstantin Ignatov was arrested in March 2019, Martin started digging into the family's past. I would like to talk about a teacher. Extremely intelligent. That's what she told me. Before or after it being such an intelligent person. She was an Überflieger as we call it. Uh she was a high flyer

Her dress was auffalled um extravagant for a pupil. Fifteen fifteen years of age. She was very proud of herself. But uh she wasn't um very popular. But other people said she was arrogant. Because of her intelligence. Um Das macht sie sehr populär in der Klasse. Sie war absolut eine Star. Sie war Phenomenal. Das ist das Wort der Lehrer sagt. Sie war Phenomenal. in with her intelligence. Martin's also managed to find her yearbook from when she was eighteen.

looks quite similar to the photos we have seen on along black curly hair and red lips, you can recognize immediately. And she describes herself Rusha was always friendly to everyone. She was always well behaved and cheerful and the teachers were deeply fond of her. She doesn't drink and she would never degrade herself to her. Her favourite classes were all Maybe we should stick to the truth? Okay, fine.

Maybe I did take pleasure in tormenting some students. I was always looking for the chance to spread new amusing stories about them. In PE I was more of a visiting guest. And I should probably not say too much on the topic of religious wars because then you really would get a false impression of me. On school trips I nourished myself purely on Bailey's and pizza, but I survived it. made her change. Why isn't wh what made her change into a criminal?

It's almost as if there are two rougias. The brilliantly clever one who impresses everyone she meets.

And another darker, more callous one. They came to us and told us that we're going to be able to do that. Miss Ignatova has a consulting company, which she owns. and she has hired her own company to consult the factory, paying herself

out of factory money. What sort of consultancy? Just basic business consulting like any what what what do consulting companies ever do actually. Apparently it's w was something about rebranding the company or something The next step and Dienstwand Business Car Light of Porsche Chayen. Well she turns up in a Porsche. She made sure that she drive Porsche Cheyenne. For the factory workers it's difficult.

Because the factory workers say, Hey Mesignatua, you have a big car and then have l less money, that's difficult about. And the next step, Zignatua goes to Bulgaria with her car the Porsche and come back by train because the Porsche in Bulgaria was stealing. A Porsche was stolen. Yeah, that's what she says. And you're thinking about it.

Worse was to follow. As part of the deal for buying the factory, Rouge's father Pluman had promised two bits of machinery called blast furnaces to replace the old existing ones. These are expensive and hard to get, but were essential. Without those furnaces, uh production couldn't go on. At that point it was really difficult to talk to her.

tr tried to put p pressure on her where we tried to say, Miss Ignatov we need that furnace now. Please act now. She just walked out. She just uh went up and left. Where's the father at this point? What's he doing? The father was uh sick and he was in Bulgaria, he was out of the picture for that time. Without the necessary equipment, production was slowing down and the debts were mounting up. Some of the workers started protesting outside Dr. Rouge's house, a few miles away from the factory.

And then something familiar. We get a call from the factory. The factory has been sold. Yeah. Gnatova sold the factory to to man for apparently one euro. The factory has been sold and Ignatova is gone. Ignatowa was one day in the factory and next day we don't found her. Nacht, als sie dann verschwunden, war sie war auch tatsächlich. Yeah. Laptops were broken in the factory, papers vanished, never to be seen again. It m made for us uh the impressions that that somebody tried to hide something.

The factory was down. I I know that. And the new owner cannot build it up. I I'm I'm sure. Let's say the end. The factory was dead.

Is the factory there now? The factory is there now, it's closed. You can see the factory from outside. The factory is closed. Never reopened again. And how did all the workers re react to this? I mean what did this mean for their lives? I don't know if you if you have a feeling for proud workers. They destroy something, destroy destroy this. He destroy his future, his his work and and that's it's very difficult. For me it's difficult to talk about. Yeah.

Most of the people working there, they don't have good qualifications. So most of the people just were out of work. One hundred and forty families. I don't live. Do you still think about it? Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. Still she's still on your mind. And um 很高興認識你因為你不讓她離開

Have people contacted you since the OneCoin story? You're the first one. No, no authorities, nobody ever showed up here to ask about what happened back then. For the people that's a other story. Different world. Different world. That's a other story. No, I said the same story. It's the same story.

This time the law caught up with Dr. Rouge. In 2016, she was convicted in a German court for several crimes. Intentional breach of duty in the event of insolvency, fraud, withholding and embezzlement of employees' wages, and violation of accounting duties. She received a fourteen month suspended sentence and an eighteen thousand Euro fine. The local newspaper reported that Rouge reappeared to attend the ruling and showed no emotion when the judgment was passed down.

She quietly slipped out and returned to Bulgaria and carried on with one coin as if nothing had happened. In the opinion of of the people who lost their jobs, like N that's not a high sentence for destroying a hundred and forty families' lives. That's not. Nothing at all. She's vanished. We'll never see her again. When did you then see her again? The local media um give me a sign that uh uh Carlos look about uh Miss Ignatoa and one coin. Suddenly she was this internet celebrity

how she got there, what happened there, how that person was still somebody after what she did here. Interesting. Interesting. I think oh it's a little bit bigger, a little bit more bigger. You recognize the same the like the same pattern again. Like you n you need the exit strategy. She learned that here you need to get out without leaving a trace. She turned up to the court. She stayed. It didn't work back then.

She tried disappearing but she didn't go the full month. So this time she knew, okay, if I if I want to get out, I need to get out complete.

And she's away. You won't read this in the official OneCoin literature. They bury this story in endless posts about Dr. Rouge's sparkling past. OneCoin. Like the fact that she's a doctor. And we haven't actually checked this yet. We've just been calling her Dr. Rougea the whole time. Um whether or not you could confirm if she studied at the university and Yeah, I can um say she studied law successful at our university. Yes.

And she finished her PhD in Law at the University of Constance. Well, right. It is true that she studied and did her PhD here. Fantastic. Thank you again. Bye-bye. Bye. She is a doctor. She is Doctor Rouge. She's smoking. Later that evening, Carlos and Sebastian take us out for some local food in the town square all together. You can both eat Schnitzer and Salad. No work together. Who knew?

Carlos wants to tell us a bit more about Rouge's personal life. This was the picture from buying the factory. Yeah, look, this is the same. And that's Plamen. Yeah, that Plamen. So the mother... She worked in the factory. I I know her, I met her um when I was there and Did she make some paper or is there anything about her you can remember how she behaved? Did she speak German fluently? She speaks German. And you zurückhalten ihr Person?

Rather introvert person, not not not very outgoing, very quiet. She she did m minor work mm cooking coffee and and stuff like that. So uh just putting papers w from one place to another. When did she disappear? When did she go? Did she leave with the father? This Mr. Bjorn is straight. Uh I I know in uh when uh Mrs. Ignatoa bought the factory at this time He was the husband. Okay, hang on. So this guy

And he it says he's based in Frankfur and he works for Linklators. This is a really respectable legal firm. Yep. So this guy, so he's still working at Linklators then? This is from today. This is from today. So we have a phone well we have a phone number here and the name of someone that was married to Dr. Ruger.

After her adventures in Waltenhoffen, Dr. Rouge returned to Sofia in around 2012 and resumed work in finance. But I wonder if this wasn't enough for the star student, the Oxford graduate with a taste for expensive cars. I think she wanted more. And in early 2014, she found it. The year that Dr. Rouge bought the Voltenhoffen factory, 2009, was also the year that Bitcoin arrived. By the time she abandoned the factory in 2012, a revolution was underway in finance and money.

And a lot of smart and ambitious entrepreneurs started buying and selling Bitcoin and many even created their own cryptocurrencies. It was a new gold rush. Just like the original gold rush of the nineteenth century Wild West, it also attracted chancers and snake oil salesmen. The second pillar is this one, the Bitcoin. The heart of the company. Promoting a brand new cryptocurrency sold through multi level marketing.

Not one coin, big coin. Make BigCoin successful. This from early 2014 is the first footage of Dr. Rouge speaking publicly that we've seen. Make the group bigger. This can be a huge success card. And I would like to thank you all. Very happy to see so many people here today. A serial entrepreneur with a string of failed MLM and online payment business ventures behind him. They'd met a couple of years earlier.

The pair had hit it off. In Sebastian, Dr. Rouge had found someone she could work with. How many of you tomorrow will register for an account? Maybe she realized that his experience in e-commerce and MLM would be the perfect complement to her intellect. Tomorrow we open the doors! We need it for the Dr. Within a couple of years Bitcoin quietly disappeared. But with Sebastian Greenwood's help, Dr. Rouge started to design something.

Far more sophisticated and far more lucrative and daring than a factory in southern Germany. This is the creator. The masterminds when OneCoin was launched in 2014, Dr. Rouge was the boss of cryptocurrency. Of one coin. But Sebastian Greenwood took the next most powerful position in the network, responsible for the multi-level marketing side of the business. Let's give a war.

Remember that voice from episode one? When Doctor Rouge was introduced on the stage at Wembley Arena? Doctor Rouge That was Sebastian Greenwood.

In late 2018, Sebastian Greenwood was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States for running a digital currency pyramid scheme. Sebastian Greenwood was an expert in multi-level marketing, but to make OneCoin go global, Dr. Rouge realised she needed credible people involved. Dr. Rouger also headhunted established professionals from more traditional sectors. One of those people was a man called Duncan Arthur. This is the first time he's talked to the media.

I'm happy going on record. I'm sick and tired of people hiding behind pseudonyms. He's worked more with the OneCoin head office than anyone else we've spoken to. If everybody is as brave as they want to be, they really need to put their neck out and here's my neck. In 2016, Duncan Arthur was working for a large American bank in London when he received a phone call. An agency found me.

I was sitting at my desk at uh the American Bank feeling very miserable, wishing my phone would ring and it rang. I was so unhappy that I was prepared to overlook things. All I could think about was not going back to the American bank. One coin was smarter and more sophisticated than Big Coin. They built an online marketplace like an Amazon where you could buy things with your one coin. It's called Dealshaker. I had more to do with Dealshaker than anybody else.

I realised that if you're going to have a proper coin it needs to have usability. felly mae'n rhaid i mewn gwirionedd. Felly rydym wedi'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'

So what sort of merchants were you were you getting in at the beginning? Absolute rubbish. Absolute absolute rubbish. It's like an online flea market. Absolutely abysmal. If you can find ten things you would actually want and that you can actually pay a hundred percent one coin for, I'll I'll be amazed and I'll buy you a beer. I can't say no to a free beer, so let's see if I can find some things on Deal Shaker I actually want to buy.

You can buy things a hundred percent in one coin on here, but up to fifty percent payment in euros is also allowed. So here we are, let's have a little browse. The first thing up is a unisex t-shirt with the one coin logo. Nine euros fifty you pay plus about nine euros fifty worth of one coin. So even they won't accept a hundred percent one coin. They want euros. I mean, okay, and if we just scroll through, I mean what a strange selection of things that you can buy here.

I mean basically ha about half of these offers everything for sale here is either from China or Russia. Vapor only water, the wellness thermal imager, psychological consultation here via Skype from Russia. High tech vegetable garden allotment car seat boys vest children's vitamins sunscreen smoke sensor gold eyelid Oh. Tina Adult Pampers? What's that? She a Chevrolet?

From Finland. Disinfectant. Yeah, I think I've gotta be honest, I think Duncan Arthur might have been right. I'm not gonna find ten things I want here. There's something called the Tranco List. Think of it like a popularity contest for websites. According to the Tranco List, Amazon is the seventh most visited website in the world. The online marketplace eBay is 41st. And in 172097th place is Dealshaker.

Just a few places below the website for The London Borough of Ealing There's a small box on the Dealshaker homepage which updates every few seconds saying how many individual users are logged in at that moment. All websites have what's called a diurnal rhythm. People wake up and people go to bed, which means the number of people visiting a website drops at night.

We know that China has the most listings on Deal Shaker and the most one coin investors. Five twenty-nine pm in Beijing. So as night falls in Beijing User numbers should go down. Five hundred and ninety-four thousand four hundred and forty-nine individual users logged in to deal. I kept a short diary to check. It's seven fifteen PM in Beijing on the twelfth of october two thousand

and nineteen and there are currently five hundred and ninety four thousand five hundred and six in the fire. It's currently ten fifty PM. In Beijing five hundred and ninety four thousand twenty. It's two fifteen AM in Beijing on Sunday the thirtieth. It's five past six AM. It's six forty five past. And there are currently five hundred and ninety-four thousand. Five hundred and ninety-four thousand.

No matter what time of day or night it is, Dealshaker always has between five hundred and ninety-three and five hundred and ninety-five thousand users logged in. 1 am in Beijing, and there are 595,169 users logged in to Deal Shaker. We've put our allegations to OneCoin. To the allegation that OneCoin is not a cryptocurrency, OneCoin replied, OneCoin verifiably fulfills all criteria of the definition of a cryptocurrency.

Its value is confirmed and reflects the constant worldwide trading activities such as the Deal Shaker platform, one of the major global trading platforms. 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.

As stated many times there are various reasons why cryptocurrencies could become the generally accepted payment means of the future. 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. 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.

When they say to us, as they have done, that Dealshaker is a major global trading platform, as the person that actually built it, what's the right response? Bullshit. For them to tell you that activity on Deal Shaker has any bearing on the price of the coin is a complete lie. It's not a major global trading platform. It's not even a proper trading platform.

And the price is not determined with anything to do with Deal Shaker, I can promise you. How do you know that? Because I know the back end of Dealshaker and I was part of when it was programmed and put together and everything else. Given all your experience, why were you involved with this for so long? I mean they were mentioned the red flags early on.

I'm probably responsible more than anybody else for keeping this alive for so long. And that's something I gotta live with. It kept a lot of people believing longer than they should have. How do you feel about that now? Uh not very good. Donc worked closely with the head office in Sophia and can tell us something about what happened when Dr. Rouge disappeared.

My relationship with the Sophia office was always very warm. There are some really talented, bright people there. They just do a job. You know, they're in a bubble within a bubble. The only networkers they meet are that maybe two point five or one percent who are successful. The guys who make the stupid hand sign go on to sell whatever. They they don't run into the Ugandan granny or the person in New Zealand who has to decide whether to sell their house or not send their child to university.

That just doesn't happen. Nobody thought Rudra was gone forever. We always thought she was gonna walk into the office. Any day now. It's just the the longer she was away the more it became apparent that she wasn't going to. I did speak to somebody in the office who said that round about that period she was incredibly tearful and anxious. Apparently she was not herself. Did the mother seem to be acting weirdly or worried or stress I mean I'm just you're not

I didn't see the mother until about two months afterwards. Um how did she feel that what was she saying then? Because it's weird for you not to for your daughter to have been disappeared for two months. Another would be Terrified and devastated. But when you saw the mother two months after she disappeared, what was she like? The same as she always is. Didn't seem up. No. Nothing out of the ordinary. Do you think there was a plan she would disappear? Mm I think it was there was a plan.

We're starting to get a clearer picture of who Dr. Rougea is. Brilliantly intelligent, utterly convincing, ambitious, expensive tastes. But what does this take? Where she might be Duncan Arthur told us that he thought Doctor Rouge planned to disappear. Having been in Woltenhoffen, where she'd done exactly the same thing, and learning how intelligent she is, I think he's probably right.

But now we also know that she was close to her family. She took over the factory with her father, and her mother Vesca worked there too. According to Duncan, when Dr. Rouge vanished, Vesca was still working in the office in Sophia, and yet she seemed unfazed by her daughter's sudden disappearance. That doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine Dr. Rougea could go long without seeing her family. And yet for two years there has not been a single sighting of Dr. Rougea anywhere.

Until Hello. Hi, Jimmy, it's Alan McLean here. Alan's the private investigator we spoke to last week. Okay, I've got a better good news for you. Oh yeah? So I have two friends who are working out in a close protection contract in uh Athens. Okay. So what I did was I sent a number of photos of our target really.

Yes. Yes. So because she does change appearance quite often. Photos of Doctor Rujia that you'd got. Yes. Yeah. So what what they did was they did they made some inquiries. I told them they target high end restaurants. They went to one of the restaurants and one of the waiters there recognized the girl and said that she'd been there in the last sixty seven months? No. They've been there six to seven months, could identify, was able to say that there was an entourage of 10 to 12 people.

See, I can't have done a fight. Next time. I is she a so is is she alive? It appears so, yes. The Missing Crypto Queen is presented by me, Jamie Bartlett. It's written and researched by me, Jamie Bartlett, and Georgia Kat, and Georgia Kat is the producer. Philip Sellers is the editor. Phil Channel and Dessislava Stefanova in the London Bulgarian Choir are responsible for the music. Remember to share and rate our podcast if you can. It is a BBC Radio Documentaries production for BBC Sounds.

We've been asking you to contact us with your stories about OneCoin, cryptocoin at bbc.co.uk. We're getting lots of messages in, including this one from earlier this week. two thousand and seventeen for me I was sold, especially the fact that this was led and run by a female CEO. Individually the most I know that somebody's put in is probably over A hundred thousand euro. The group that I invested

with is kind of family and friends. We were told that when the exchange happens, our coins are going to go directly into our account and we'd be able to then trade it for via currency or buy things on different platforms. It has been one date after another of false promises of the exchange is going to happen. This date in October.

then no, sorry, it's gonna happen again in January, then it's gonna happen again, I believe it was in April, and nothing has happened. Last I heard a few days ago was that um it's actually going to go on the public exchange within two weeks. But yes, I do think my money's gone. BBC Sounds. Hi, I'm Charlie Howard. I'm getting ready for fashion fix. I'm so excited! My new podcast that shows us how to get our fashion fix while fixing the world. Stop buying the chip.

Being Mother Earth as well. And each other. I'm ready to recover from my eating problems, I'm just ready to move on. You can download and subscribe to Fashion Fix with me, Charlie. on the BBC Sounds app. See you soon. där vi ger dig mer för pengarna. Du får just nu lax fil fyrapack för bara 59.90, och yogurt i grekisk stil för 269 med lidel.

Mer för pengarna på Liden det lönar sig. Emma som presenterar Simon och Kans dejver. Under miljontals år har djur utvecklat sofistikerade paningsritualer. Fåglar dansar, varje rylar och pigmer fria med stenen. Och Simon, han ska laga middag. Och han flippar ur. Men Simon shoppade på Amazon och köpte ljusstaka vinglaser eftersom han är optimist. En extra tandborste. Sigon, det bor alltid dju i dig din rackare. Få dig den att hända hoppa på amazon.se.