WBD596 Audio Transcription

The Queen of Scams with Jamie Bartlett

Release date: Wednesday 21st December

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Jamie Bartlett. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Jamie Bartlett is the co-writer and presenter of the BBC's podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen, an ongoing investigation into OneCoin and the disappearance of its founder Ruja Ignatova in 2017. In this interview, we discuss the latest updates on the case that triggered the first new episodes in the podcast being released in over 2 years.

“It’s a gigantic pyramid scheme with all sorts of organised crime and money laundering angles to the story as well, but at the centre of it, it’s just this woman who built a very sophisticated scam and then disappeared with all the money; and then the FBI finally put her on the 10 Most Wanted list about three months ago.”

— Jamie Bartlett

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Jamie, good to see you again.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, good to see you.  How are you doing?

Peter McCormack: I'm all right.  I'm think the last time we did this was in your front room.

Jamie Bartlett: It was, wasn't it, yeah; oh my god, I forgot about that, yeah!  Pretty nice here now, isn't it, where you are?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, pre-COVID; so, a lot's happened since then.

Jamie Bartlett: That's right, yeah.  It was a long time ago now, and you've bought a football team in the meantime, so a lot's changed.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, a lot has changed, and we've got Danny with us.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Danny now travels with the show.

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: Great to see you, Danny.

Danny Knowles: Good to see you.

Peter McCormack: Were you producing the show when Jamie was on it?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, but wasn't the last time we did it on Defiance though rather than What Bitcoin Did?

Jamie Bartlett: I think we did a bit of both, didn't we?

Peter McCormack: We did both, yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: I was really into radical political movements, crypto anarchy as well, done a lot on that, and I think you were really suddenly getting into all of that as well.

Peter McCormack: That was a book you'd written we covered.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's it, yeah.

Peter McCormack: But we did the OneCoin scam as a show on its own on What Bitcoin Did; it was a popular show.

Jamie Bartlett: Oh right, good.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, popular show at the time.

Jamie Bartlett: I thought you meant The Cryptoqueen was a popular show.

Peter McCormack: Well, we know that's a popular show, come on, man; as I said, I was at your book signing.

Jamie Bartlett: It wasn't really a book signing though, was it?

Peter McCormack: No, it wasn't a book signing.

Danny Knowles: So, tell the story; where was this?

Jamie Bartlett: It was at the -- what was it called?

Peter McCormack: I don't know.

Jamie Bartlett: The Accelerator event, it's in sort of central London, sort of the City.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, one of those kinds of buildings where lots of really fashionable cool people work and you've got no idea what they do for a job.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's it exactly, and actually I was doing a talk about OneCoin and then the organiser said to me, "We've actually got quite a controversial host of the event after you, he's called Peter McCormack", and I was like, "I know Peter".

Danny Knowles: Why were you controversial?

Peter McCormack: I actually don't think they fully appreciated what they asked me to do and how it was doing to turn out.

Jamie Bartlett: You were chairing a kind of debate, weren't you?

Peter McCormack: Well, firstly, it was Jamie giving a talk, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was an update on The Missing Cryptoqueen because your book's out now.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's it.

Peter McCormack: So, it's a talk; he's basically on a book tour, right.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, something like that.

Peter McCormack: And had an interview with a guy about it, gave an update, and then they wanted to follow it up with a debate about crypto --

Jamie Bartlett: -- and trust.

Peter McCormack: -- and they asked me to chair it, and then they obviously sent me through the list of people who were on the list, and there was like a guy from Bitpanda, but basically a bunch of shitcoiners. 

So, anyway, they got us all on this call beforehand to try and prep it, and the girl who was prepping it, she was like, "What are all the questions we're going to ask?" and I was like, "It doesn't really work like this because in the environment, you want to ask questions", and she was getting really nervous.  I said, "Look, listen, I'm going to be honest with you because this is what I do, it's my job.  So, I'm just going to turn up and ask questions, and even if I agree with you in advance, I'm probably just going to change it, so you've just to accept that I'm just going to turn up and do it, or you can just remove me from it".  And she said, "No, okay, you do it, but just don't get me in trouble", and then basically I definitely upset a few people.

Jamie Bartlett: It was the Peter McCormack Show basically, but a lot of people were there to see you, I think, as well because they all listen to the podcast.  I think, in the end as well, you go to hundreds of events about crypto and trust and this that and the other, and like most of them, you don't remember anything.  At least people would remember because it got a bit heated.

Peter McCormack: It did.

Jamie Bartlett: You were saying like, "You're all a bunch of shitcoiners", not in those words, but you were sort of cutting through some of the crap.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: It was brilliant; people loved it.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what it does, we spoke about this on the way, I don't know if you remember in the interview we did the first time, I said there are different levels of scams because there are certain people who call everything a scam, if it's not Bitcoin it's a scam, it got ridiculous, "Owning a chair is a scam, you should sell it and buy Bitcoin", but there were different levels of scam; there are outright obvious scams, like OneCoin, where there is no blockchain, it's never going to exist it is just theft.

Jamie Bartlett: It was designed originally to be a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme basically.

Peter McCormack: Exactly.

Jamie Bartlett: Using crypto as the branding.

Peter McCormack: There are lots of those that exist in crypto, let's say crypto-wide.  Then you've kind of got what I would say is like a semi-scam where they have got a blockchain, they're promising it'll do something, they sell a bunch of tokens, premine them, sell them off straightaway and nobody ever makes any money unless they're in -- then you've got what are just shitty ideas which maybe something like I would say Solana, it's just a shitty idea.  Now, some people call that a scam, some people say it's a shitty idea; I say it's a shitty idea because it's not decentralised, it keeps stopping. 

Then you've got other things like Ethereum where I think it's a genuine attempt to do something, like there are people who genuinely believe they can build useful applications on it, and also, even though I hate it and I wouldn't use it or I don't like it, there are useful things on it.  I've just read an article about people in Argentina who are using TRON, which some people would call a scam, but they're using the dollar stablecoin on there to protect their income because the peso is so fucked.  So, I find it hard to call that a scam when it's actually supporting people's lives. 

You go all the way up to Bitcoin, which some people actually call a scam, but there are all these different levels and my problem is, the further you go down the scam, the more I think they use something like Bitcoin and blockchain as a cover for it actually being a scam.  I only care about Bitcoin, so when I was in that environment, these people talking about blockchain solutions, blockchain for voting, I was just like, "I just want to go and say, 'Look, it's all nonsense, convince me otherwise'", so I was a bit mouthy.

Danny Knowles: That sounds like you!

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: It's very true though about the layers of scams, it's really important; I think we talked about this before.  The problem for the OneCoin investors who did not understand any of the tech of any of it, they weren't crypto investors at all, they just had heard about Bitcoin in the newspaper or something, and their friend told them that they're in on the next big thing; they just would look around and see everyone calling everything a scam.  So when people would call OneCoin a scam they'd be like, "Yeah, but whatever, you call Ethereum a scam, so what's the difference?" 

So, that's why the language is quite important about, "That's a pump and dump scam", "This could be accountancy fraud, not actually really a scam on an exchange site", "This could be a good idea [like you said] or a bad idea, but that some people do believe in", that's not quite the same.  So, you've got to be really precise with the language on this otherwise it ends up, unfortunately, sucking a load of people into actual scams.

Peter McCormack: We were talking on the way because we've relistened to the last two episodes just as a refresh.

Jamie Bartlett: The new ones?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, as a refresher, and Frank Schneider was on there and you had that moment with him where you were asking about, how did he not know, "Come on, this is common sense", and Danny was, at that point, in agreement.  I said, "Let me tell you something, if I launched OneCoin and I called up my dad and said, 'Look, Dad, I'm doing this project, I need your help; can you help me with it?' and he said, 'Yes'.  I said, 'Look, I need a manager, I need you to manage my diary, to book my hotels, to do all this stuff for me, will you come and work with me?' my dad would say, 'Do it', and he would probably travel with me and do those bookings". 

Even at the point where I could explain it to my dad, and he'd be like, "Oh, this sounds great", and even at the point where things were in the press, things saying, "Peter McCormack's a scammer, OneCoin is a scam, stay away from him", and if my dad came to me and said, "What's this all about?" I say, "No, Dad, these people are traitors, they don't understand.  The reason I'm increasing the supply by 50:1 is because there's massive amount of demand", and he'd be like, "Oh, okay, yeah I get it".

Now, I'm not 100% sure I believe Mr Schneider but I think you can get caught up in something without knowing you're caught up in something because it's so obvious to us because we have the knowledge.  The reason I'm saying this is that everything that happens with these scams makes my life as a bitcoiner harder because I'm trying to explain a tool which is used for human rights, it's used by activists, it's used to route around capital controls and authoritarian states, used by people for me to pay suppliers, for them to pay me across borders, also for some people to invest.  There are all these uses for Bitcoin, and more often than not, with everything that's happened, say now with FTX, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital, it all gets lumped in together.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's right.

Peter McCormack: Trying to navigate that, it's a bloody nightmare.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it definitely is.  I mean, the Frank Schneider interview was really interesting, because for anyone that doesn't know, Frank Schneider is a former top spy for Luxembourg, he's a top European Union spy, he was Director of Operations at SREL.  And in Luxembourg, they do specialise in a lot of financial crime as well, given where they are.  So, we're talking about someone that really knows how to spot deception, and he is in the process of being indicted by the Department of Justice in the US for his role in the OneCoin scam, for money laundering and wire fraud.

Peter McCormack: Wasn't he actually indicted today or yesterday?

Jamie Bartlett: A new indictment was published; it was a superseding indictment.  So, he'd already been indicted, he was arrested to great fanfare in France, he's under house arrest at the moment, and then a new indictment, for reasons I don't really understand actually why they put a new indictment out, but a superseding indictment was yesterday, I think it was it came out.  So, they want him, and he's got one more appeal left to run, but it looks likely he will be indicted.

I suppose that interview was interesting because he was under house arrest when I interviewed him, he's got an ankle bracelet on, it was a really weird thing to do.  But there's a very specific thing that, for me, was most interesting about that is I said, "Frank, you're a spy, you're trained in deception, how comes you didn't spot this?"  "Oh, blockchain's complicated, it's confusing, I don't understand the technology". 

All right, leave that to one side, that's your dad's argument, I understand that.  But I did say, "Not just you're increasing the supply by a factor of 50, because Ruja built a new blockchain and she increased the supply by a factor of 50, she said the price is going to remain exactly the same, €5.95, which to me, obviously, that's real alarm bells".  And he said, "But I don't understand any of the technology", and I just thought, "It's not really about the technology though.  Was this not very, very suspicious general behaviour for you, as a spy, for someone to have done something like this; isn't this basic economics?  Wasn't this enough to make you really concerned that maybe the price of OneCoin was just fixed and fake?"

Peter McCormack: What was his job for her?

Jamie Bartlett: Different people say different things.  He ran a private intelligence company, called Sandstone in Luxembourg, so he was kind of managing some of her security, some of her PR and reputational stuff.  But he's often described by others as a sort of all-round fixer, someone that sorted things out for her; I don't really know what that means exactly, to be honest.  But it was just a good example for me of where sometimes people allow themselves to be baffled by the technology, they don't look at the fundamentals. 

It's a multi-level marketing company with a price that Ruja seemingly can just manipulate at will for a product that a lot of people are saying is fake.  To me, that is enough for a professional person to say, "I think I should probably step away from this".

Peter McCormack: When are you a co-conspirator though?  I'm trying to see both sides, I'm trying to be as most charitable as a I can to him, because to me, she's obviously the master criminal, there may have been a few master criminals.  If his job is security and he's arranging that security and there's an announcement about this increase in supply and he just doesn't read it because he doesn't care -- I mean, look, if I had to put my gut in it, he probably knew what was going on.

Jamie Bartlett: Well, I had questions.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: The thing is it's a sort of strategic ignorance I think; sometimes people just don't want to ask certain questions.

Peter McCormack: Especially if you're being well paid.

Jamie Bartlett: Exactly, and that is what people like Ruja do and what they understand, that you pay someone a lot of money, they won't always ask difficult questions.  When is someone a co-conspirator?  Look, Frank Schneider hasn't been charged or found guilty yet, or hasn't been convicted of any of this yet, so let's see; but he is being charged with money laundering offences and wire fraud.  So, the FBI are alleging that he was somehow quite actively involved in the promotion of this and making this company really function and moving money around for Ruja and concealing its origins and purpose.  So, that's a slightly different thing from, "Frank, you should have known".  That's not really so much of a question of legality, that's more a sort of moral question like, "Frank, come on, you should have got this; why did you miss this?  Look at all your skills and experience".

So, I'm not saying that just his ignorance was criminal, there are other charges that he's got, but I think in law they talk about known or should have known, like with the weight of evidence and the information you had, you should have reasonably known what was going on.  But I'm not a lawyer, so I can't really answer that properly.

Peter McCormack: My suspicion is he knew or he was being ignorant, but I'm just more interested at the point you become what you're doing is criminal, and I guess, if you're moving large amounts of money around, you have to be aware of where it's coming from and where it's going to.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, and that's a separate thing, isn't it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: That's the sort of money laundering charges, and in the case of OneCoin, that seems to be what the Department of Justice is most interested in.  They don't really seem to go after the top promoters, the people that have been pushing OneCoin and selling it to people all round the world, but they've gone after Ruja's investment manager, who they've done on money laundering charges; Frank Schneider, they're going after him on money laundering charges. 

Peter McCormack: Her brother?

Jamie Bartlett: Her brother, money laundering and fraud; he pleaded guilty to those charges.  So, they really go after the money launderers in these things; they see their role as upholding the integrity of the financial system, don't they?

Peter McCormack: Do you think there's a possibility it's that these are the people that will give them the best chance of getting to her and one may roll?

Jamie Bartlett: Yes, definitely.  I think the general thinking on this is that her brother -- I mean, at the moment, they've got her brother, he's pleaded guilty; they've got her lover, he's pleaded guilty and works with them; her investment manager, he was found guilty although he's appealing, he was asking for a retrial; her co-founder of OneCoin, Sebastian Greenwood, he is awaiting trial at the moment; now they're going after her senior advisor, Frank Schneider, this Luxembourg spy. 

These are really the sort of top people; it's just her, she's the only one left.  But the big thing that's happened since we spoke is that the FBI put her on their Ten Most Wanted list, which shows they really do want to get her.

Peter McCormack: What was it, a $5,000 reward?

Jamie Bartlett: No, that was Europol.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: Europol put her on their Top Ten Most Wanted list, or their Most Wanted list, they don't have a top ten, their Most Wanted list, and then about two weeks later, the FBI puts her on their Most Wanted list but they offer $100,000 reward.

Peter McCormack: When we heard that €5,000, we were like, "What?!"

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's a bit weird, isn't it?  But the thing is, even the $100,000 reward from the FBI is an interesting number, because if she's being protected by some wealthy oligarch, they know $100,000 isn't going to mean anything. 

What I think they're going after are people that work in the ports in the Mediterranean, the people that work in the shops that might have spotted her, the people that work on yachts and boats, the catering crew or whatever; people for whom $100,000 would actually make a real difference in their lives and would be enough for them to basically quit their jobs and disappear for a while, so that's why I think they've chosen $100,000.  I asked the FBI about it because I interviewed them for it, and they sort of hinted at that.  But is she now the only crypto scammer on the FBI's list?  She's presumably the only crypto scammer that's ever been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

Danny Knowles: I would have thought so.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I would have thought so.  She's not the only one under the investigation by the FBI; we'll talk about that one later. 

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what we should do, sorry, because it was 2009 when you were last on the show. 

Jamie Bartlett: 2019.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, 2019 -- 2009 was when Bitcoin was released -- 2019, so it's been a while, we've got a few more listeners now; I bet some haven't even heard of OneCoin or know what it is, just a quick TL;DR on it.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, the quick story is Dr Ruja Ignatova comes out of nowhere in 2014 and says, "You've all missed Bitcoin, and Bitcoin's for criminals and anarchists like Peter, it's not going to be for ordinary non-technical guys, it's drug dealers and all the rest of it on the dark net.  So, I've created something better; it's called OneCoin, it's really simple, easy to use.  Bitcoin's got this decentralised blockchain which means it's never going to be controllable, but I've built a centralised blockchain, so I can reverse transactions and stuff like that".

Peter McCormack: The irony of that statement!

Jamie Bartlett: I know!  But what you've got to remember is that, for ordinary people, that kind of does make sense.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: Like my mum would immediately think, "Yeah, that's better because what happens when I get my Bitcoin stolen and they're gone forever, I've forgotten my password, what am I going to do?"  So, she was trying to pitch this to ordinary people, non-technical, non-sophisticated investors, but she also sold it through multi-level marketing, so like Amway or Herbalife; you buy some OneCoin, then you sell it to your friends and family and you get a commission.

So, this thing then just takes off so quickly, and by 2017, she's got a million investors from 175 countries who've put in over €4 billion into this.  The price of OneCoin keeps going up but she keeps saying, "It's not available to trade yet on Kraken or Poloniex or Binance or one of these, but it will be soon"; that day never comes.  October 2017, she gets a Ryanair flight from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Athens, Greece, and just disappears into thin air.  She's gone with at least $500 million of investors' money, that's what her brother says but it could be more than that, and she's been missing ever since. 

Really, the whole thing is just a pyramid scheme, but she'd put crypto in there to make it seem new and original and fresh, and she captured all the hype of Bitcoin because every time the price of Bitcoin went up, these OneCoin investors would think, "Wow, I'm on the next one", because they were so gutted they'd missed the first wave; back then, $500, it did feel like you'd missed it, it felt too late.

Peter McCormack: "Shit!"

Jamie Bartlett: If the people that had invested in OneCoin in 2015 had put it into Bitcoin they actually would have got the money Ruja promised them, weirdly enough.  So, she's been on the run ever since, it's just a gigantic pyramid scheme with all sorts of organised crime and money laundering angles to the story as well, but at the centre of it is just this woman who'd built a very sophisticated scam and then disappeared with all the money, and then the FBI finally put her on the Ten Most Wanted list just about three months ago.

Peter McCormack: There are a lot of victims around the world.  Is there any particular example story of a victim that would be a good example to give to people of what people have been through?  We spoke to Jen McAdam a while back and I know there's -- I'm trying to remember the African country.

Jamie Bartlett: The guys in Uganda?

Peter McCormack: Uganda, that was it.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Are there any particular example, or more than one?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, there are so many, and you know the whole of the OneCoin saga has become a bit of an industry in its own; there are documentaries being made, there are movies being made, it's really become a big story if you like. 

The typical thing is the average investment was about €5,000, and these weren't wealthy people, so €5,000 for a lot of them was their savings, the only real savings they had.  Some people would re-mortgage their house, some people would borrow from friends and family because they weren't interested, with their €5,000, they weren't interested in 10% annual returns; what good's that going do them?  They want to buy a Lamborghini; they want to go on holiday. 

Ruja was offering 300% returns immediately, €10,000; it's going to go the way of Bitcoin, it's going to up 10,000% in a year, and that's what people were interested in.  And what would often happen is someone would invest maybe €200 or €300, they would see the price of OneCoin was going up, they might even be able to get some of it out because they did have a clever internal exchange site where you could sometimes trade some OneCoin for some "real money", sorry for the expression.

Danny Knowles: Who was setting the price because there was no market?

Jamie Bartlett: Ruja.

Danny Knowles: So, she was just changing that?

Jamie Bartlett: She was just changing the price whenever she wanted, so it was just going up and up and up.

Peter McCormack: Did it ever go down?

Jamie Bartlett: It never went down.  The FBI's actually posted a picture of the graph of the price and it's just a staircase, it just goes up and up and up and up.

Peter McCormack: Where can I get some?!

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.  So typically, and this was why people like Ruja are brilliant students of psychology more than technology, they understood that if you can give someone a small payout so their €100 investment did turn into €500 and they got that money back, they'd immediately put €5,000 in straightaway and that would be gone for good.  So, they were very clever, and I heard that over and over and over again.

In Uganda, the guy I spoke to, Daniel, he'd sold his goats to invest it in OneCoin.  His mother had then put her life savings, €2,500, into OneCoin.  I spoke to a former winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in America, she was from Israel originally, she'd invested, I can't remember, was it tens or hundreds of thousands, $100,000-and-something, the money that she got after her husband died.  I've even heard of people with, believe it or not, PhDs in finance that have invested money in OneCoin; a doctor from America invested $900,000 into OneCoin.

So, it's everything from a very, very poor person in a rural village in Uganda, and when I was over there, everyone had heard of OneCoin in Uganda.  It was so interesting because there's a real hype about crypto in those places and sometimes it was a bit sad.  All the exciting hype and the Laser Eyes and all the stuff that was going on here, behind that there's some victim in a small village in Uganda who wants a piece of the action and has lost his life savings of €500.  So it was tough, yeah, and you know the weirdest thing is, this month, OneCoin events are still taking place!

Peter McCormack: So, I've got this on here, literally here, "Is it still being sold?"

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it is still being sold.

Peter McCormack: Who's selling it for who?

Jamie Bartlett: They have rebranded it as the One Ecosystem, so they've got a new name for it.  There was meant to be an event in London this week, Monday just gone, but a load of the victims contacted the people that were hosting the event somewhere in London and they got it cancelled.

Peter McCormack: In some ways I would rather it went ahead to go and see who's involved.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I wonder actually.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: I was actually hoping to go there myself but it got cancelled.

Peter McCormack: So, who's "they"; you say they are still selling, who is it?

Jamie Bartlett: Do you remember I had a weird phone call in Season One, the first season, with this guy called Kamran Hye who I phoned him up and he started calling me unprofessional and all the rest of it?

Peter McCormack: Maybe.

Jamie Bartlett: You probably would have.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: He's still involved, he's still pushing it, other former promoters are still pushing it around the world.  So, it was being marketed in 175 countries, so in places like Thailand, they're still hosting big events, the regulators aren't doing anything about, it's not really being stopped.  So, the FBI can stick Ruja on their list, but over in Thailand it's still going ahead as normal.

Peter McCormack: But are these separate entities who have got individuals who are exploiting it, or is there still a funnel to some top --

Jamie Bartlett: Both.

Peter McCormack: It's both?

Jamie Bartlett: See, I think both things are happening.

Peter McCormack: So, it's kind of decentralised now, ironically?!

Jamie Bartlett: Why it's so hard to control!  So, there is still a head office, the same office in Bulgaria, in Sofia, Bulgaria, that's still open, the One Ecosystem they're calling it, like I said.

Danny Knowles: Is this the website?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it looks like it to me.

Danny Knowles: Do you know the crazy thing is, it says, "Our cryptocurrency was designed for regulation, not speculation", on the website.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what that sounds like?

Danny Knowles: What's that?

Peter McCormack: BSV.  It is, because that's what the BSV people started promoting, and I think I'm okay saying this, one of the things that Craig Wright has been pushing is that you should be able to return coins to people, your private key isn't finality, it doesn't prove ownership.  So, that's something that they push too.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.  So, there is still a head office, there is still that going on and money's still funnelling up the pyramid to the people at the top; but I also think that out in a small village in Uganda, you'll still have promoters who are just going around knocking on doors, village to village, and saying, "Give me some cash and I'll give you some or I'll send you some OneCoin.  I'll open an account for you on the website, but we'll make it between us".  So, sometimes when you cut the head off a pyramid scheme, it can carry on because promoters could carry on exploiting people by using cash and word of mouth.

Peter McCormack: I wonder if someone's even created a OneCoin token?

Danny Knowles: Maybe.

Peter McCormack: Have a look, because I wouldn't be surprised, because it would be very easy to create that as well.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, God, there are so many places to go with this.  So they still have an office in Bulgaria?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Why have the Bulgarian authorities not closed this down?

Jamie Bartlett: Okay.  Well, I can speculate about this, because if you've heard the last episode of the podcast, we find that Europol meetings, where the Americans and the British and the Germans and the Dutch and the Bulgarians and the Dubai police were all there sharing information about OneCoin, they're investigating OneCoin, this is before she disappeared, the minutes from those meetings, the PowerPoint slides from those meetings, found their way to Ruja within days of those meetings happening.  So, we speculate that one way that happens is through the Bulgarian officials, that those meetings were somehow getting that to Ruja.

Peter McCormack: You're whispering; we're just going to turn it up when we release it!

Jamie Bartlett: Just got to be careful with my words.

Peter McCormack: No, be careful, and look, if you need someone to check it before it goes out, we're okay with that.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.  So, that sort of suggests that Ruja's very well-connected in Bulgaria, and we've sort of known that all along, but it's very mysterious how and who and exactly in what ways and who would be behind this, because it's kind of well documented that Bulgaria is the most corrupt country in Europe.  Critics say most countries have a mafia; in Bulgaria, the mafia has a country.  It's quite a well-known place for organised crime and the government, they're quite intertwined, corruption's a massive problem.  I think the general belief is that Ruja had corrupted police officers, had some form of protection there, and it's possible that that is why it's still open, why it's still in operation because I don't understand it myself, why they haven't just shut this down and arrested everyone.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it feels like at this level, it would need to go a bit higher than police officers though.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it's not just about individual police officers.  There are all sorts of allegations that I can't really repeat because -- you know why, it's so hard to stand up allegations against named individuals when it comes to rumours of organised crime and stuff because no one talks, no one tells you anything. 

This is one of the reasons our investigation into it, it's a little bit stalled, because we need to go to Bulgaria again and I'm pretty worried about that, given the last thing that we reported on with this Europol thing has caused a bit of a stink over there apparently.  It was in all the news about someone in the police is leaking Europol things to Ruja, and there was pressure on the government, and they weren't answering questions about it.  So, I've got to now turn up there, and they'll see when I arrive, on the flight list, and I'm thinking, "Well, what's going to happen?"

Peter McCormack: So, how many people were in that room, do you know, in that Europol room?

Jamie Bartlett: There were different meetings, but usually about 20 or so.

Peter McCormack: So, the potential candidates are people in the room, but then also there are potential candidates who are people who just move files around, have access to files.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's right.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Jamie Bartlett: It just makes it, again, because we've always wondered why is Ruja so confident; why did she disappear just before she was about to get arrested?  Well, she was having access to these meetings.

Peter McCormack: So, the organised crime part of it is interesting and I've got a few questions about this for you, but one thing I keep thinking about is, is she in a position where she's now buying protection?  And even if that is the case, at the point where you've bought protection off very scary and dangerous people, does there come a time where they then own you and she needs to be kept protected and maybe it turns to where it's an exploitative relationship with her, it's like, "No, give us the money".

Jamie Bartlett: I know.

Peter McCormack: It's better the devil…

Jamie Bartlett: I've spoken to a lot of people about this and a bit of speculation because I can't see exactly what's going on and who's exactly behind it, although the rumour's always been that this one individual in particular, called Taghi, he's considered to be the most notorious drugs trafficker of all time --

Peter McCormack: Great name.

Jamie Bartlett: -- the Cocaine King they call him, the nickname, the Cocaine King, that he's somehow involved in this; he lives in Dubai at the moment.  He's someone that's known to have been close to government as well somehow, so these are the sort of circles we're dealing with. 

The question's always been, and I think it's the question the FBI also has as well, did Ruja start this out with organised crime somehow involved, like a big plot to launder money, it was just a clever way of making money for them and for her as well?  Or, and this is the one I think is more likely, did OneCoin get very big very quickly and then organised crime groups in Bulgaria turned up and said, "Hi, how about we run your security now and how about you launder money for us, and in exchange, we'll make sure you're safe?"  That, to me, feels more likely knowing Ruja's background and how OneCoin started, I think that's what probably happened.  Then those would be the people that would help her disappear, but she'd have to keep paying them to keep her protected.

I spoke to someone the other day about this saying, "She's now on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list; does this not mean she's more of a liability for people that might be protecting her?"

Peter McCormack: Because if they're looking for her, they might find other things?

Jamie Bartlett: Well yeah, exactly, because once you get on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, the FBI don't want to be made to look stupid; they don't put people on there unless they think they can find them.  They've got a strike rate of I think it's over 80% or 90%; they find most people.  I think they put them on there when they know they're going to find them, because otherwise why would put someone on there that you know you'll never get?  You'd look stupid. 

So, suddenly the FBI are nosing around and all the powers that they've got to do that; it gets harder to keep someone hidden.  And again, like you say, the people protecting her don't really want the FBI snooping around their business.

Peter McCormack: But if there's no new money coming --

Jamie Bartlett: So, what I'll just say that he said, "It just will get more expensive for her". 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: It's not that they would get rid of her, she just has to pay more.  So she has to be in control of the money, she has to still have access to millions of dollars to keep herself protected, and that is going to get harder and harder and harder to do I imagine with the FBI now really on to her.  So, I don't know, there are a lot of rumours around, there are rumours that she has been killed.  My last theory on this was that she was floating around on a boat in the Mediterranean, off and on land, but is that now still true the FBI is on to her?  I don't know.

Peter McCormack: There's a rumour she's now a man.

Jamie Bartlett: There is a rumour that she is now a man; I've heard every rumour, rumour that was around London a lot as well, but never been able to -- the funny thing is people are absolutely convinced they've seen her.  I get phone calls all the time, "Oh actually, I definitely saw her, she was at Heathrow Airport", "I saw her in a car", "I saw her here, she's in a shopping centre in Australia", she's somewhere else.  People are absolutely certain it's her, but the problem is a lot of people look like Ruja.

Peter McCormack: That happened with Madeleine McCann.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: And with Tupac; that happens.

Jamie Bartlett: And Lord Lucan before that, I guess.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, although the silver Aston Martin with the numberplate was kind of interesting.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: But on the organised crime thing, and you might not want to talk about this so if you don't I'll understand, but how much consideration do you have to make for yourself right now?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I feel like I'm in quite a difficult position with this because I really want to get to the bottom of this story, obviously, and I feel like there's a lot of expectation for me to do that.  I'm lucky that I've had millions of people listen to this podcast, that are interested in the story, reading the book, all the rest of it, and they look to us to be the ones that are going to solve it.  But I don't want to get myself killed for it, do you know what I mean?  As much as I want to find her, I don't want to end up…

Peter McCormack: See, I see it slightly differently.  As a mate, I want you to be okay and I want you to keep doing good investigative journalist work; but at the same time, I think the only reason for you to keep doing it is to create more entertainment for people.  But this is now in the hands of the right people to solve it, who've got the resources to do it, so I don't think you should feel any obligation to carry it on.

Jamie Bartlett: It's not so much an obligation.  I guess I feel very lucky that so many people want to listen to our investigation, and there's a part of me, obviously, having done it for so long, I just want to see it resolved.  If I'm perfectly honest with you, it's a bit frustrating for it to be up in the air all the time constantly hanging over me, where is she; what's happened to her? 

I would be so happy if I got a phone call tomorrow saying, "The FBI have got her, it's over", and I can go to America and sit in on the trials, watch them unfold and I don't have to worry about it anymore and I'll move on to something else.  But all the time it's out there and she's somewhere, I feel like it's sort of annoying for me, I've dedicated so much of my life to it, I can't really just easily walk away.  So, I'm trying to walk the tightrope; I'm not just going to walk away because I'm scared, but there are probably places that I'm not willing to just rock up in Dubai, start banging on doors.

Peter McCormack: No, it's unnecessary risk.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, exactly, so we're trying to figure it out.  At the BBC, you've got great security advisors and they'll say, "You probably shouldn't go here but you're probably all right going there".  And so, going back to Bulgaria, for example, it's a bit risky, but the way I see it with organised crime groups, and I don't actually want to investigate organised crime groups, I don't, I just want to find her and they're in the way of that.  If you're listening, organised crime groups, I'm not interested in you lot, just tell me where she is and that's the end of it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, this show's actually quite popular in the underworld of Bulgaria!

Jamie Bartlett: Right, that's good to know; she might be listening!

Danny Knowles: Well, it's only criminals that would listen to Bitcoin shows!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course!

Jamie Bartlett: So, for example, part of the thinking is organised criminals are very, very clever business people, they're not stupid.  It would be more trouble for them to get rid of me, they wouldn't want to do it, it would idiotic, and they're smart people, so they probably will leave us alone because why would they want to draw more attention to themselves?  So, you think, "Okay, well that's good, that's quite safe, so I feel confident with that", but yeah, it is a bit nerve-racking.

Peter McCormack: Have you received any threats?

Jamie Bartlett: Nothing, nothing serious, no.  I'd like to tell you that I have and I'm really brave, but no, I just sort of get left alone, left to get on with it.  Paranoia in your head though, isn't it, sometimes? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: It can freak you out in your head; you can imagine all sorts of things, and that can be just as scary.

Peter McCormack: Well, look, I listened to the original series when we made a podcast, and that was great, and then I've listened to these two additional ones, and as I say, on the way down, when we were relistening to it, I was just thinking more as a mate, like there are some serious people involved.  I just, on a personal perspective, I don't think there is an obligation.

Jamie Bartlett: Well, what would you do if you were in my position; just walk away and leave it?

Peter McCormack: No, I'd put it a different way.  I think if you felt like walking away, there shouldn't be any guilt.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Look, I went into the Venezuela slums without security because I found it exciting.  I think you should do whatever you want, that's it; if you want to carry on, carry on, if you don't, don't, but don't feel an obligation.  You've materially contributed to the investigation, and if and when she is found, then you would have played a major role in that, I just don't think you have an obligation to the audience to find her.  That said, I can imagine if I was you, there's an itch now.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and that's different.

Jamie Bartlett: It's just hanging around me all the time, everyone wants to know, and I want to know.  I've been doing it for four years now; imagine one thing for four years, and it's so infuriating because it could be any day.  Every now and again I expect my phone to ring and someone say, "Oh my God, have you seen the news?  They've got her; it's brilliant!"  I'll be so bloody pleased because I feel like I could wrap it up.

Peter McCormack: I kind of want the phone to ring one day and it's her talking to you.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I'd love that too.  But originally, I think my expectation's changed because when we started this, I really thought there was a chance that we'd find like a tap on the shoulder, get a sighting of her, but now with everything that's happened, I've got to be realistic.  I'm not going to knock on a door and she's there, I'm not going to spot her in a building somewhere, so it's more, I suppose, just working out what we can now do without getting ourselves in serious danger, and there are a lot of things we can still do.

Peter McCormack: Is it a case that the more you investigate, the more information you find, which gives you more leads, which starts to then make it feel even harder, like where do we go?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, a little bit, that is very true, yeah, and that's a problem.  You've got to know where to stop because you can follow this story in a million different directions.  And the reality is as well, for people that listen to this, they don't actually care that much about organised crime or money laundering because you've heard it all a million times, they just want to know where did she go; where is she now?

Peter McCormack: They want to catch the baddie.

Jamie Bartlett: That's it, yeah, and I'm very conscious of that.  So, you know when podcasts go off on these little tangents and they're like, "Okay, let's do an episode and it's going all be about organised crime and how it works", people don't care, they just want to know what happened to this woman.  So, we're trying to only put episodes out now which are really about that, getting closer to it.

Peter McCormack: Well, that was the good thing, it doesn't feel stretched out, and people can do that, and it could feel like, "Oh, here's another ten episodes", and you're really kind of dragging it out, although I did think, when you made Episode 11, once you got the memory stick, you could have ended on that because I was like, "I want to know what's on that memory stick"; that would have brought me into another episode. 

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, but you've got to wait for ages and you'll have forgotten about it by the time it comes out, that's the thing.

Peter McCormack: So, where now; what now with it; where do you go with it now, or do we have to wait?

Jamie Bartlett: You have to wait a little bit because of all the things I've said; we've got to work out what we can say and what we can't say.  Basically, the way we left it is we went to interview this guy, Frank Schneider, he's under house arrest in France, he gives us a memory stick and basically says, "This has got the answers, this is going to help you find her", talks about loads of other stuff that we haven't really gone into, and we are still combing through that.

Here's one of the strangest things that for anyone that didn't listen, the whole story is very Netflix-y I suppose.  Dr Ruja's boyfriend ends up working for the FBI and then records the phone calls that he's having with Ruja before she disappears.  But what he doesn't realise is, because of these Europol things, Ruja knows that the FBI are on to her, so she's recording the phone calls as well.  And Frank Schneider gives us a memory stick with three hours of phone calls, right up to the point she disappears, between Ruja and her boyfriend, and we're still combing through all of that for little clues.  But both sides, they both suspect that the other's recording, so the whole thing is so strange.

The other thing here is like loads of documents about companies and things like that, and who wants to listen to a podcast episode that's about Company X was owned by Person Y who owned another holding company in the British Virgin Islands? 

Peter McCormack: You say that --

Jamie Bartlett: Too much of that and it can get quite boring as well.  So, we're working through it all, trying to figure out how does this get closer to her?

Peter McCormack: But in London, you did put up a slide about the structure of the companies, and that was fascinating, but's five minutes, so maybe that works because we had the visual that you can see about this kind of crazy structure.

I was thinking about one of the questions I had on the way about this all is like, in terms of personal finances for me, at the end of each month, I do my personal finances and I've got bank account A, I've got this; bank account B, I've got this; savings, I've got that; and on my Bitcoin side, it's like wallet A's got this, wallet's B got, and I just know where everything is, I just keep an eye and I know where it all is.  Is there a master account for where this money is, because it's clearly distributed everywhere into assets, accounts; and if so, who manages it, or is it separate?  I'm really intrigued to how she's managing the flow of that money and the pots of that money.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it's very complicated; I'm still trying to work it out myself to be honest because you've got, let's say, $4 billion is invested, I calculated that about a third of that went back out in payments to the multi-level marketers because you've got commission payments.  So, you're getting your 10% for every OneCoin package that you sell, so she had to come up with a very clever way of paying tens of thousands of people every week the money they'd earnt from selling OneCoin packages to other people.

Danny Knowles: Did she pay that in dollars or was she paying that in OneCoin?

Jamie Bartlett: She paid that in 60% fiat and 40% OneCoin; the whole thing's really complicated!  So, there was all of that she had to deal with and worry about, and she had accountants and all sorts of things.  Her boyfriend owned a bank, and I think the boyfriend's bank was providing credit cards, but it's all very, very complicated.

Then there was her own personal wealth.  So, she's buying houses in Sofia, she bought properties in Sofia, she bought a £13.9 million Kensington penthouse, she had bulletproof Lexuses, all loads of cars.  Then she had four $100 million British Virgin Island-regulated investment funds, and the OneCoin money that the investors are paying in was ending up being disguised as investments from wealthy European families into these British Virgin Island investment funds, which were then going to buy other companies that Ruja that ultimately owned, but none of it was in her name.  This was the way that was turning some of the OneCoin money into legitimate investments that she owned.  Then she owned houses in Dubai.

According to Frank Schneider, there's €1 billion still out there in bank accounts in China, in Dubai, in Australia and I think South Korea, but I can't just phone up the Chinese -- so, you hit a brick wall when you're following the money.  I know that's the journalistic adage, isn't it, "Follow the money", but I can't follow it everywhere.  So, we're piecing it together and we're finding things here, there and everywhere.  I think she may have done something with online casinos in Malta, but you hit a bit of a dead end.  I think she put money into a Luxembourg trust fund, but you hit a dead end; you can't get past it, you can't see anything more. 

So, you piece together little things here and there, but more often than not you hit these on-paper owners that are -- very commonly, a lawyer would own it for her, so the person that was technically the owner of her London family office was a 27-year-old Cypriot woman and a former manager of Pizza Hut, also from Cyprus, who were registered to an address in Dubai, and they were the owners of her London family office; where am I going to go with that?  Firstly, what do Companies House in the UK do about that?  That's so dodgy-looking; this multi-millionaire crypto genius and it's a Cypriot Pizza Hut manager who's the owner of her family office in London, come on; but no one does anything about it.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's why I'm wondering is there a master accountant who's running the back office of all this, who's running the money flows, who's managing the lawyers?

Jamie Bartlett: Well, she was actually quite famous for trying to manage everything herself.

Peter McCormack: Oh right, okay.

Jamie Bartlett: She was very, very clever; she did work in finance for years and she got a PhD in Law and she's a really, really smart person.  But her American lawyer investment manager, Mark Scott, who was convicted for this, he was the one running those British Virgin Island investment funds, but then she would have had someone else doing another thing over here.  She had some lawyers dealing with her property, she had someone dealing with her online casino, she had someone dealing with her Sofia houses, a different lawyer.  She must have employed at least ten lawyers in different countries who some of them were dealing with this, some of them were dealing with that.

So, she had to kind of have a view on everything, but she had lots of people working for her managing the day-to-day stuff.  Why?  Are you interested in what you're going to do with all your money then?!

Peter McCormack: No, but I have a very simple life, my finances are quite simple, I still have an accountant and a lawyer to help me out with it, but mine's super simple, and I'm just thinking it's like --

Jamie Bartlett: The stress of it or the difficulty?

Peter McCormack: The stress of it.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I'm trying to think, if you want to get away though, one of the things me and Danny were talking about on the way down is like, if you're her, is this exciting and fun or is it just constant stress?  Is there an excitement of being on the FBI's Most Wanted list, getting away with it, and are you just living this highlife of parties and a yacht and people protecting you and you've got your two fingers up, or is it constant stress?

Jamie Bartlett: I think constant stress.  I think at the beginning, all the early parties, and she had loads of parties, and Tom Jones sang at her birthday party in London, and then she had Bebe Rexha singing at her birthday party in Bulgaria in 2017, all these amazing cars, and she had a big yacht, and she really was living the highlife.  But she then had a daughter in October 2016 and she disappeared one year after, and I think the moment she had her daughter it changed, but it was stress.

Danny Knowles: Is her daughter with her?

Jamie Bartlett: I can't go into all that stuff, partly because I'm not sure.  I don't think the daughter's with her, but I really avoid too much talking about the daughter because the daughter's just an innocent party.  It's public record she had a daughter so I'm not saying anything super-private; she talked about it a lot.  But my suspicion is, and from talking to people, that might have changed it from being cool and fun and exciting to just being unbearably stressful, but it was too late by then.

Peter McCormack: Could she also have exited in that she's got almost like a private version of witness protection; she's gone and bought an ID, a location, and she's just disappeared? 

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, she's definitely done that, she's definitely got ID, she's definitely got all of that stuff.

Peter McCormack: But what I mean is there's a version where she's still in the shadows of maybe Bulgaria and hiding out there, maybe she gets a private jet to Dubai occasionally and she's got still those same people, or she's completely disappeared and gone to some people and say, "Here, I've got $500 million, I want to escape with $10 million, $15 million, I want an ID, I want to be in a country nobody's going to look for me, like, I don't know, south of Chile or up in Brazil", has been mentioned often, "And I just want out and I want to be left, and take all the money".  That is an option because if it is all that stress --

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I asked about that kind of master accountant, and the master accountant is somebody (1) who can steal your money, (2) who could roll on you, so you've got to have multiple heads of this snake because one gets cut off. 

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I don't know how you do this, and I wonder if she's just gone, "I'm out, I'm done".

Jamie Bartlett: She's very close to her family though, so it's one thing about just disappearing and saying, "All I want is a new ID, and I don't want to be involved with organised crime and this protection or that protection, I just want to live in a normal place somewhere far away from everyone with my new ID and I'm gone", and she could have afforded that 100 times over, and that is possible, and maybe she did do that.  I, however, have had a lot of sightings of her in and around the Mediterranean right up until just a year ago.

Peter McCormack: The life she likes.

Jamie Bartlett: The life she likes, and I spoke to a private investigator, I've spoken to a lot of private investigators, and they said people always revert to type, they end up back where they started.  They end up the lifestyle, the food, the glamour, the family, the people, people can't just disappear, or it takes a very unusual person to be able to do that, and that's not normally what happens.  They normally stay close to the first place they went, which in this case is Greece.

So, this is our sort of working theory, but it is possible, and there are people that can make you do that.  I've read a few books about how to disappear, because obviously looking into this, there are loads of books out there about how to do it.

Peter McCormack: Well, we did that, didn't it?  So, do you know the Quadriga story?

Jamie Bartlett: Yes.

Peter McCormack: So, we were looking into that, and we were looking to make a similar story to yours about that, and what was his name?

Danny Knowles: Gerald Cotten.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and part of the way we were going to make it, and I don't mind because we're never going to do it now, but we were going to try, as part of the podcast, to disappear, to actually disappear.  The only people I was going was let know was my family and friends and then I was going to try and disappear; it's a lot of work, a lot of planning.

Jamie Bartlett: It's a lot of work, yeah.

Peter McCormack: We looked at the books.  I gave myself a year of prep before I could actually do it, syphoning bits of money away, and it's --

Jamie Bartlett: It's a lot of work, yeah, and one mistake, you lose discipline, that's the thing that all these books on disappearing say, you've got to have this iron discipline; you make one phone call, you make one little mistake, you appear somewhere in public for too long, you're desperate to contact someone so you just can't help logging into Facebook to just -- that could be it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: A lot of people have said to me, "But it's impossible, she couldn't have done it, she'd be spotted, all the cameras everywhere", but why do we have an FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and a Europol's Most Wanted list?  Go and have a look at them, loads of people that have been on the run for absolutely ages.

There was this British guy that stabbed someone in a bar in London, got himself a fake ID, travelled around Europe for about two years, all he did was got some tattoos and grew his hair long, no one recognised him.  Then in the end, he handed himself in because it's so stressful just constantly on the run.  It's not fun, no matter how much money you've got, the stress of it.  So, if she is out there, she's living in a golden cage because it would not be fun, especially not now she's on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.

Danny Knowles: The thing that I thought when we were listening is, Dubai seems like a place where maybe she could be working with either the royal family or the state or in some way maybe they're hiding her; because do you want to explain what they did with the money because that's super interesting?

Jamie Bartlett: So, do you mean the Bitcoin deal?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yes.

Jamie Bartlett: This is very, very complicated whether this even happened at all, and I'm increasingly wondering whether the whole is itself an elaborate scam within a scam, but it seems that at some point, again long before she disappeared, Dr Ruja had €50 million or so frozen in Dubai bank accounts, €50 million.  And it seems that she struck a deal with a sheik there, although I should say he denies all of this and claims he was the one that was wronged, but struck some kind of deal where she essentially handed the power of attorney over to him to have control over the OneCoin companies, including the bank accounts with the frozen money, the €50 million that's frozen. 

In exchange, he handed her four memory sticks with 230,000 Bitcoin on them, which at the time, was €50 million because this is in 2015; the thinking being Ruja gets the Bitcoin and me, the sheik, with the strings I can pull and my contacts, I can unfreeze your bank accounts and keep that money for myself.

That all ended up going disastrously wrong; he wasn't able to unfreeze the accounts, he did send a letter or two off to like the Chief Prosecutor in Dubai, but the bank accounts weren't unfrozen.  Then there was this big legal dispute between Ruja and him about who really owned it and had he overstepped his power of attorney, and got very, very complicated. 

The latest ruling on this, which was just a few weeks ago, I think he now is probably in possession of that €50 million of frozen money; I think he has won.  All these appeals were going on in the Dubai commercial courts about it, and he has won and now does own that €50 million.  The question is, did he ever really give her 230,000 Bitcoin on four memory sticks?

Peter McCormack: Any blockchain scanning to see any big transactions?

Jamie Bartlett: Oh yeah, tried it, but it was all on supposedly cold wallets, it's just a memory stick with access to God knows how many cold wallets, it wasn't ever said.  I don't know if any of them moved; I had no addresses for any of those wallets.  But this was presented in a Dubai commercial court, documents where the sheik signed it, like, "I handed Ruja these Bitcoin in exchange".

Peter McCormack: "Trust me, guv'".

Jamie Bartlett: Well, it could be that he just made that up to explain why he should have the €50 million that was frozen, and again, I'm like how am I supposed to figure this out?  So, she was sort of connected in Dubai, she did have a mansion there that we think we found using some open-source intelligence work.

Peter McCormack: That was an amazing part of the story.

Jamie Bartlett: So, you know, using just one photograph on Instagram that her brother took, we managed to geolocate the exact place of this mansion that we think she may have owned but she probably isn't there anymore.  We sent some Krispy Kremes round there on a Deliveroo-type thing to see if anyone was in but no one was.  So, she had good connections in Dubai, and this Bitcoin thing was really annoying me, I couldn't get to the bottom of it.  We've got court documents that say this sheik gave Ruja four memory sticks with 230,000 Bitcoin and it's like, "Maybe we can trace it, we can use blockchain analysis to figure it out".

Peter McCormack: If I was the court I'd say, "Show me the evidence that you purchased and they transferred".

Jamie Bartlett: Well, what they used was certificates, like, "Look, he's like an affidavit kind of thing, certificate of purchase".  Yeah, I know, but this is the old-school way.

Peter McCormack: But that's like OneCoin; there's no actual crypto!

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, but this is the old-fashioned way of doing things, isn't it?  "I've got a document with a lawyer and have signed it and there it is, and that's proof"; your world of proof is, "Show me the key, show me the money moving", but that isn't how courts really work still.  So, to the court, I guess that was enough evidence, that was what they needed, and it comes down to these interesting questions about trust, like do you trust a blockchain analysis or do you trust a lawyer's letter that's waved in the air at you?  I don't know if she even had it, I don't know if it was scam within a scam so the sheik could get the €50 million.

So, she was connected in Dubai, but because they fell out so badly, I wonder whether she had to disappear again from Dubai, because I think she was in Dubai after she vanished. 

Peter McCormack: Right, you think that's where she went?

Jamie Bartlett: I think one of the first places she went was Dubai, but I think she may have then had to have moved on again.

Peter McCormack: Getting from Greece to Dubai without a passport, how difficult is that?

Jamie Bartlett: No, she had passports, she had loads of passports.

Peter McCormack: So, it would have been a fake passport?

Jamie Bartlett: I think she fake passports, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Has no one looked at the cameras at the airports?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, the FBI probably has; they're not going to tell me, are they?

Danny Knowles: And if it's private, they probably don't really care.

Jamie Bartlett: She travelled in private jets a lot of the time.

Peter McCormack: Well, there you go.

Jamie Bartlett: So, this is why it's really difficult.  The last known sighting was basically Athens Airport when she landed there on her Ryanair flight, and I asked the FBI about this, "Was she definitely on that flight, because it could have been misdirection, because didn't Jan Marsalek from Wirecard, he pretended to be on one flight and then went off on another flight?" and they basically said, "No, we can't tell you but we're pretty sure she was on that flight, let's just say that".  So, we know she was there, but from that point, it goes a little bit cold.  I'm sure the FBI obviously has information that I don't have about what happened then.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Jamie Bartlett: If you look at the languages that they've translated this FBI notice into and the countries they've mentioned, Albania, Greece, Dubai, Eastern Europe, Balkans, Germany, they're all places that were kind of on our radar as well. 

Peter McCormack: Do you have a board at home with pictures and bits of string that you stand and look at and go crazy with?

Jamie Bartlett: No, people just do that in the movies.

Peter McCormack: You didn't want to do that?

Jamie Bartlett: I did want to do that, but I made it as a podcast, didn't I, so what was the point?

Danny Knowles: The thing that was a massive red flag for me was that the last text message that I think she's known to have sent, I can't remember, who was that to?

Jamie Bartlett: To Frank Schneider, so he says.

Danny Knowles: They used to speak in German, and then the last text message was, "Home safe", in English.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Danny Knowles: That seems like a huge red flag.

Peter McCormack: Well, when you ever hear about a kidnap or a murder and the person who's done it keeps texting from their phone for a while, that just sounds like one of those.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.  The thing is what's always difficult about this is do I trust Frank Schneider; was that true?  The funny thing about this story is you never really know who you trust either.  The whole thing about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, to bring it back to your, it's trust; why do you trust things you trust?  Like why do you trust money; why do I trust Frank Schneider; why do I trust the legal document in the court; why did OneCoin investors trust Ruja?  Ruja had letters from lawyers; Frank Schneider trusted that.  Why did he trust that more than the blockchain? 

It's liked everything is about trust in this story and why you trust certain things, and it does your head in a bit, like do I trust Frank Schneider; is he lying to me about that text message for some reason?  I don't know, I can't see the text message, he never showed it to me.

Peter McCormack: Are there times where you've kind of got really, well you must have got very frustrated, feel like you don't know where to turn and like the whole thing's just becoming a big, jumbled mess?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, that's how I feel at the moment.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you do?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I do, and I've got two things in my head: one is like how do I make this into a story; how do I tell a story, because that is what I do as well, isn't it?  How do you draw a line through the chaos of this story?  This was always aimed at, I hate to say ordinary people, but the whole purpose of us putting this podcast together was for non-Bitcoin people to listen to it and think about it.  You know how many people get scammed; you talk about it all the time.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: How many people in the UK hold crypto assets?  2.3 million, or it's more than that now, that was the last figure; how many of them understand it really, properly? 

Peter McCormack: Not many.

Jamie Bartlett: Not many.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I don't and I've got a show!

Jamie Bartlett: And how many are losing money all the time because they don't know what they're doing?  So, the point was normal people are more and more putting their money into crypto assets for lots of reasons, good reasons and bad reasons.  Can we issue a warning to them about how easy it is to lose it all, the risk of it? 

Peter McCormack: You try.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, and I felt like part of my job is I've got to make this story into something really digestible, easy, simple, I've got to line through the chaos, got to get people to switch back on, and that's almost like a separate job to, "Can I do the hard work and find where this woman is?"

Peter McCormack: Have you dreamt the story?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, dream about it all the time.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I thought you might.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, all the time; it's bloody annoying.

Peter McCormack: Have you found her in a dream?

Jamie Bartlett: There was that one time, I mentioned it in the book, where it was the day the podcast came out and this guy's smashing on my door at 3.00am saying, "Get the fuck out of here, get out of your house!" banging on the door like this.  This wasn't a dream, I thought it was a dream, and I wake up and I think, "Oh my god, these guys have found me already, what am I going to do?"  So, I go to the wall and this guy's banging on the door, "Get the fuck out the house!" and I'm like, "Oh man".  So, I phoned 999 because I don't know what to do really, and I'm actually explaining to the police that I've just released a podcast for the BBC and I think that they're on to me, and these guys are like, "What are you talking about?!  Ask him what he wants".  So, I'm like, "What do you want?"  He was at the wrong house! 

That just made me so paranoid for the next so many months, so that was the closest thing to an actual dream because I thought I was dreaming for the first couple of minutes.  I was like, "What is going on here?"  But you know what dreams are like, they never help you, never actually give you a clue.  It's not like in the movies where you get this sudden waking up and a connection's formed in your brain between information A and B; it's never happened like that.

Peter McCormack: No, I think it's more of a signal of how deep you are in a story if you dream about it.  Like after my mum died, over this period, I just dreamt about my mum all the time because it was consuming me.  When I got divorced, I used to dream about my ex-wife because it consumed me for a period.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: When something's consuming you, it starts to populate your dreams, and I just didn't know if you're that deep.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I am.  If I'm honest with you now, it's been so long that I have started doing other things, I have started doing other things as well because you've got to.  You don't get paid that well being a journalist, let's be honest, so I've had to do other things as well, and it's not as all-consuming as it was.  It goes in waves, like when we've got new episodes we're working on, it is nonstop and you become obsessed and you see Ruja everywhere.  The danger is when you're writing these stories, like me, you get really obsessed with little details, "I've got to get the bottom of where that $100,000 went", or what that one person did that most people, for the storytelling element, don't care, and you've got to try to remember that.

So, the problem is when you're obsessed with a story, is you get in the weeds and you lose what's more important sometimes, which is what's going make people carry on listening to this; what's the big thing?  I've always found it really interesting, like I know the story inside out, and I'll go and talk to people about it, or they'll come up to me and say, "I loved that story about that missing woman, she's like that Bitcoin woman, wasn't she?" and you'd like this, Peter, I said, "No, not Bitcoin".  "No, but it was one of them, it was like Bitcoin or something like that?" and I'm like, "Oh man!"  The level that people actually engage with these, it's so superficial compared to what you think.

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: So, you've got to keep it so simple and so basic a lot of the time.

Peter McCormack: Well I had it recently, a friend got in touch, she was like, "Listen, my boyfriend's involved in a Bitcoin scam, I don't know what to do", and I was like, "Well, just send it across to me and I'll have a look and I can talk to him if you want".  She, anyway, sends me the link; it's like a OneCoin, it was just another scam like that, no mention of Bitcoin, none of it anywhere, but she was convinced it was a Bitcoin scam.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: It had nothing to do with it, which it does, again, makes our life so much harder because she automatically thinks Bitcoin is a scam.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I know, and I did try in the podcast to really make that distinction, but the thing is the problem I sometimes have is, every event I go to, someone says, "Yeah, but Bitcoin's a Ponzi scheme because new investors are just getting fleeced by the old investors and they're paying the old investors essentially because you get in early, there's nothing of any value and the old investors are selling to the new investors at a massive profit; what's the difference?"  So, then you try and talk about that and why it's different, but it sort of drags you down, doesn't it, a little bit?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: You don't get on to the interesting stuff.  But the thing I find most frustrating is the number of emails I get from people who say, "My brother's been involved in a scam, my sister's invested in a similar thing to OneCoin, can you please look into it for me?" and I can't, it's enough to do one crypto scam and focus on that; I can't look into all of them.  But it makes me think that the police, that people don't bother going to the police, they're going to journalists saying, "Please can you expose this scam for me because my brother --"

Peter McCormack: I feel bad now!

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, yeah, but it is difficult.  Is it your job to do it? 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: A little bit, maybe, sometimes, given your position, but it's hard work to try and expose scams because it took me a long time to figure out what was going on with OneCoin, and that's a really simple scam.  When people say, "You need to get into Tether, you need to look into Tether, you need to look into this one, you need to look into that one", my head hurts and I think, "I'm never going to figure it out; it's too complicated.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, God, yeah.  We get asked all the time, and there are certain ones we want to look into, but sometimes also you've got to be very careful.  We talked about this beforehand and I'm not going to get into this now, but you can end up in lawsuits if you call something wrong, which is a really dangerous position to be in because certain lawsuits can destroy your life.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: You have to be very careful.

Jamie Bartlett: Even if not just financially, mentally stressful, and it's like unfortunately, people do use the legal system to silence critics, whether it's crypto or anything else, and that had stressed me out a lot with the OneCoin story as well, like a lawyer's going to complain about this or complain about that.  You do all your work as a journalist to mitigate against that as best you can, and I'm lucky because the BBC's there as well, but I know that for online critics of OneCoin, they got letters from top London law firms threatening them, and it's very easy to roll over because you think, "Well, what's the point; is it worth my money, my life, my stress to do this?"  Unfortunately, wealthy people using the legal system to silence critics, God, it annoys me so much, it's disgusting.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, we've seen that the oligarchs, all that came to light, threatening journalists.  A lot of the Russians had an opportunity to come and hide money in the UK and buy expensive Kensington flats and Mayfair flats.

Jamie Bartlett: I understand why people who are critics would just find it easier to just say nothing because of the stress you're put under.

Peter McCormack: There was one specific, I forget her name but I think she might have written for the Guardian, she wrote a book, and she got a lot of threats, and finally, she's been protected, but she still had to go through a very long period during that of stress and cost to try and protect herself; it's why I'm such an advocate of free speech now.

When people say, "Yeah, but what about hate speech?" and I say, "Well, what about it?"  There's more harm done by banning words than allowing words to be free; there's more harm done by that.  There's that really good stand-up comedian, he's talked about being offended, he says, "Okay, you're offended, then what happened?"  This is why I'm a big advocate now of free speech because I've been through a situation, I've seen situations where people are threatened, and we need to have the ability to be able to call these things out, so I get it, man.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, I know, and also with social media, there is the opportunity now to go out of your way to get offended, like you can find it.  I think Christopher Hitchens has this quote, I can't remember the exact words, but where it's like, "If people are determined to stand on a ladder and peer through their window so they can look at someone on the toilet and get upset by that, there's not much you can do about it".  There is that, sometimes, people sharking around social media looking for the chance to be offended about something and then, for various reasons, causing a stink about it.

Peter McCormack: But they're not offended really.

Jamie Bartlett: Well, no, not really, and I think that when you've been on the receiving end of being told you can't say something or being threatened to be silenced, you understand free speech a bit better as well and the value of it.  You also understand it better probably when you're targeted by free speech and you get the sort of hate crime targeted at you.

I think a lot of people talk about it in the abstract and they've never experienced neither one nor the other, and I think if you've experienced both, somehow you sort of get a better feel for what free speech is, why it matters, where the limits might be.  But a lot of us talk about it just in abstract terms, but I think more of us need to feel it to understand it, you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: I feel like I've felt it from --

Peter McCormack: I've felt it!

Jamie Bartlett: You've definitely felt it, I felt a bit, and then become more of an advocate of that side of it.  But if you're on the receiving end of loads of hate you might, having felt it, you might feel a bit like, "Woah, we need more limits on this, man.  I'm getting targeted, I'm getting attacked".  If we can bring those sides together a little bit…  But I'm with you, I err on the side of free speech always because just the overall benefits to society are greater.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, listen, I think society has established what words can and can't be said on a moral level, I think we've established that, okay, and there are social consequences for saying hateful words and hateful things to people.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I think society can deal with that, but there are deep consequences from banning speech, protecting the people who you don't want protected.  The UK is a shitshow for free speech, it's one of the worst places in the world.  I don't have the energy to fight it anymore; I've been fighting it for four years, but I know there are lawyers out there who are trying to fight this because the UK has become almost an embarrassment with our free speech, but we'll see what happens with that.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, it's definitely a bigger thing but it's interesting how it's sort of touched both of our lives in different ways.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: In the end as well, there is a danger more broadly about, if people go around being terrified of saying the wrong thing and getting targeted online because they've said the wrong word or getting cancelled for this or whatever it is, we're not going to develop the critical faculties ourselves to be able to really have these good arguments because no one wants to have them, no one wants to talk about things. 

One thing that's really difficult for people at the moment is there are a lot of things that I see people saying online that I really don't agree with at all, but I don't want them to get silenced.  But you feel like you can't even defend the person's right to say it without seeming like you agree with what they say; it's very hard to argue the principle of free speech.  I know the old cliché about, "I agree with what you know, I don't defend your right to say it", but in practical terms, that can be quite difficult because you just think, "I just don't want to be tarred with the same brush as that guy because that's going to look really bad on me", and that's really sad, that's a shame.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's the adapting to a world of social media, which is whole other conversation we can do another time.

Jamie Bartlett: What's a whole other thing that I have actually written a book on as well.

Peter McCormack: I know you have; I think I interviewed you about it, yeah.  Okay, there was a whole other thing I was going to ask you about with just a very short answer really.  We've had a lot of scams exposed right within our industry recently, specifically everything's that's gone on with FTX.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: This guy, Sam Bankrun-Fried.

Jamie Bartlett: Bankrun-Fried?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we'll it's Scam Bankrun-Fried, or Scam Bankman-Fried, like there are all different versions.

Jamie Bartlett: He's got a good name for this, hasn't he?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I saw a great meme online and it was a bunch of lizards and they're going, "Yeah, and we'll call him The Bankman'".

Jamie Bartlett: God!  Scam Bankrun-Fried, on my god!

Peter McCormack: But I doubt you've been able to avoid seeing it.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: To me, it's not far off one of the largest Ponzis that has ever existed, not far of what Bernie Madoff did, which even if it was incompetence a lot of it, it's still you've got yourself in a big hole, and we've seen somebody who hasn't been arrested, who's out there essentially on a PR tour at the moment doing lots of interviews.  I'm just interested in any perspective you have on this as somebody who has tracked an actual scam for the last four years.

Jamie Bartlett: I can't believe he's doing it; I'm amazed that he's decided to go out there and do all these interviews and stuff.  You've got hundreds of journalists now, the FBI will be watching his every word and they'll be looking for any evidence of things where he's lying or things that's he's said, and all these journalists are combing through it saying, "Well, he's just admitted to a fraud there without realising it", "Oh, he's just admitted to doing this thing", "Oh, he sent $10 billion from this account to that account where he should have declared that or should have declared a vested interest in Alameda Research". 

I don't know if he realises quite how risky it is what he's actually doing because of how the authorities are going to look for evidence, in his own words, because I guarantee he doesn't probably fully understand securities law or all the different things that are expected of accounting in a company like his, because why would he?  He should have advisors to do all of that.  So he probably, at some point, will have incriminated himself by saying something.  I mean, I don't know, I'm speculating; I don't want to say because I know he's not been convicted of anything yet, he's not been charged with anything yet so we've got to --

Peter McCormack: Disclaimer, disclaimer.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.  I'm watching it very closely.  I've always noticed how long it's taken the authorities to build a case up against someone, they take a very, very long time.

Peter McCormack: Why hasn't he been arrested?

Jamie Bartlett: The public expect the police can just swoop in and get someone but they have to build a case.  In the UK, the police have got to build the case, take it to the Crown Prosecution Service, they've got to decide whether it's in the public interest to prosecute and if there's enough evidence for that; that all takes ages.  It's very unusual to just arrest someone immediately.  It feels like, with what happened with FTX, is the story really came out through the journalists; I don't know whether the Department of Justice was across what was going on, so they might be scrambling to try and get evidence together at the moment, so it's hard to know.

I did see some interesting similarities from the investors' perspective, like Forbes covers and like the credibility of someone who's got highly esteemed parents and top names promoting or working for the company, advertising the company, looks all very legitimate, work with the regulators; Ruja's said all of that stuff as well.  So there are interesting similarities about why investors were just sort of pouring money into this.

To me, obviously the thing that seems strange is just the creation of the token and the ability to turn investors' funds into FTT, the sort of internal currency of the FTX exchange site, and then use that as collateral on loans and stuff like that, a little bit like OneCoin.  It's like, "Well, is that really crypto-related or is this quite an old-fashioned type of scam?"  Some people have said it's very old-fashioned accountancy fraud rather than some new crypto magic.  But I think I get stuck at that because there I'm out of my zone here, I don't really know, I don't really know what's expected for internal accounting requirements for this kind of thing in the Bahamas and all the rest of it, so it's hard to make a judgment on that.

Peter McCormack: I think the interesting thing you've said there though is the fact that everyone's expecting an arrest straightaway, but really they're building a case. 

Jamie Bartlett: I'm guessing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.

Jamie Bartlett: I've got to keep putting a disclaimer in because of how hard it is.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Jamie Bartlett: But this is just what I would imagine because I just know, for the OneCoins, the FBI were looking into this for like 18 months and then she disappeared, so that's how long it was taking because they don't want to bring a charge against someone and then them not have the evidence to stand it up.

Danny Knowles: Can I just say, he's just freely given up evidence at the moment, like why arrest him and then get lawyers involved and he might stop talking?

Jamie Bartlett: There's no sign that he's going to run away.

Danny Knowles: No.

Jamie Bartlett: I imagine they wouldn't let him.

Peter McCormack: And I imagine there are some difficult jurisdictions here, jurisdiction issues between the US and the Bahamas.

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah.

Danny Knowles: They're still trying to figure out if the US entity is actually solvent and all that kind of thing.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Jamie Bartlett: They need to know what's going on, and it's not as easy and people think.  I know podcasters might charge in and be like, "This is fraud, and this is that and it's so obvious", but you've got to prove it in a court of law.

Peter McCormack: I know how difficult those things are!

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, and it takes a long time to build the case up for that, so I don't know, I'm guessing, but that's what I imagine is going on.

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, Jamie, always a pleasure to sit and talk to you.  I think you're doing amazing work and I think the success of this is well deserved.  It is a brilliant story brilliantly told; I've loved following it.  Congratulations on the book as well.

Jamie Bartlett: Yes, thank you; that goes into a lot more detail for those really interested in the workings of the OneCoin scam.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and we'll look forward to seeing what you do next because obviously, based on what you've done here, I'm expecting big things, and hopefully if it's with the BBC, they're going to give you a bigger budget, but we will see.  But listen, congratulations.  If anyone listening wants to find out more about this, where do they follow the podcast; where do they buy the book; where do they follow you?

Jamie Bartlett: Yeah, you can get a book in the usual places, and to be honest, the podcast in the usual places, so they're both called The Missing Cryptoqueen.  And yeah, similarly, I'm looking forward to an invitation to a football match soon to see Bedford FC.

Peter McCormack: Whenever, you're welcome.

Jamie Bartlett: I can't wait.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, whenever, you're welcome.  Well, 17 December is the next home game.

Jamie Bartlett: Is it?

Peter McCormack: We're trying to get a record crowd, so if you can come up to Bedford on 17 December you'll be more --

Jamie Bartlett: Okay, let me see what I can do; I'd love to go, yeah.

Peter McCormack: We've actually got a Bitcoin meet-up before the game as well; we can do a OneCoin meet-up before the game.

Jamie Bartlett: But you'd probably lose if you do that and you're on a winning streak, aren't you, so I don't want to change it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we had a streak of 13, I think, then we lost, and now we're on a streak of 8, so we've got to keep that going. 

Jamie Bartlett: Love it.

Peter McCormack: But listen, keep going, man, this is amazing; I'm sure we'll do this again soon.

Jamie Bartlett: Okay, thanks very much for having me.