[9] Reporting in 2023 and 2024 suggested that Ignatova may have been murdered in 2018 on the orders of Bulgarian organised crime figure "Taki" Hristoforos Nikos Amanatidis, who is suspected of initially sheltering her.

[13] Ignatova emigrated to Germany with her family when she was ten years old, and spent part of her childhood in Schramberg in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

1 EuGVO – Chancen und Perspektiven der Reform des Gerichtsstands am Erfüllungsort, which discusses lex causae in conflict of laws.

[16] In 2012, she was convicted of fraud in Germany in connection with her father Plamen Ignatov's acquisition of a company that shortly afterwards was declared bankrupt in dubious circumstances; she was given a suspended sentence of 14 months' imprisonment.

[23] In 2022, prosecutors in Darmstadt, Germany confirmed an investigation of "a lawyer from Neu-Isenburg" for possible money laundering: the transfer of 7.69 million euros by Ignatova into one of her private accounts in 2016.

In January 2022, police searched apartments and offices in Weilburg, Baden-Baden, Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg, Neu-Isenburg and Vaihingen.

[33] While a 2022 interview with FBI Special Agent Paul Roberts noted that the agency's investigation into Ignatova was "operating under the assumption that she is still alive" and that the agency had "no information" to counter that belief,[34] Bulgarian investigative reporting site Bureau of Investigative Reporting and Data – BIRD published a 2023 report on Bulgarian police documents in which a police informant had overheard Georgi Vasilev, the brother-in-law of the Bulgarian drug lord "Taki" Hristoforos Amanatidis, saying (in an intoxicated state) that Ignatova was murdered in November 2018 on Taki's orders.