Missing “Crypto Queen” Ruja Ignatova may be hiding in Russia to avoid criminal charges, according to a BBC investigative journalist specializing in Kremlin affairs.

Ignatova was a Bulgarian-born entrepreneur who founded a fraudulent cryptocurrency ‘pyramid scheme’ known as OneCoin, which is thought to have scammed investors out of roughly $4 billion. She disappeared in 2017 and hasn’t been publicly located since.

Yoran Tsalov, who also worked for Bellingcat, argued that Ignatova “has been linked to multiple people and interests connected to the Kremlin” in an email shared with Decrypt. 

Tsalov claims these links were confirmed by Ignatova’s former security adviser Frank Schneider during a BBC interview with him, done as part of the outlet's Missing CryptoQueen investigation and podcast series.