The Netflix documentary will follow investors-turned-investigators looking into theories on the founder's sudden death. Quadriga Fintech Solutions was the owner and operator of QuadrigaCX, which was believed to be Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. TRUST NO ONE: THE HUNT FOR THE CRYPTO KING, a DONT F*CK WITH CATS-style investigative thriller, is now streaming on Netflix. Gerald Cotten is a bitcoin millionaire from Canada whose death, supposedly from complications relating to Crohn's disease, is now being questioned. QuadrigaCX's Crypto Accounts Were Emptied Months Before CEO's He is believed to have carried out Ponzi scheme scams since he was just 15 - such as playing a role in pre-crypto digital token eGold, according to investigator Amy Castor. I really prayed it wasn't a scam. Was, whom employees described as a macho, terrifying character, that Patryn was involved in a money-laundering ring under a different name, Then, out of the blue, one Mike Patryn joined the Telegram group that investors were using to discuss conspiracies. "It did become an obsession.. [7][8], Quadriga co-founder Michael Patryn was identified by The Globe and Mail as Omar Dhanani, who was convicted on identity theft charges in the U.S. and served 18 months in Federal prison. - Watch Full Details ! Someone tracked Patryn to a scam forum called TalkGold, where Patryn talked to one user in particular, sceptre, a bunch. Have something to tell us about this article? Like the end of a classic Ponzi, the OSC said that due to Cottens bad trades, QuadrigaCX couldnt afford to credit customers who withdrew funds. When Canadian blockchain whiz Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly last year, hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds vanished into the crypto ether. [52], The CBC released a 6-episode podcast about Quadriga and the death of its founder called A Death in Cryptoland. Netflix's 'Trust No One': Who Was QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten? Then Gerald Cotten suddenly died, in December of 2018, from complications with Crohn's disease. After beginning as an entrepreneur, Cotten founded Quadriga Fintech Solutions in 2013 and the company evolved to become the largest crypto exchange in the country, and it even helped to legitimize Bitcoin. Widow of Quadriga crypto founder Gerald Cotten says she had no idea It essentially removes the need for a central authority. Attack on Titan Season 4 Part 4 to release Fall 2023, confirms new trailer, {{#media.media_details}} {{#media.focal_point}}. [17], Ernst & Young reported on 6 February 2019 that C$468,675 (US$354,300) of bitcoin were "inadvertently" sent to an inaccessible cold wallet. Quadriga Fintech Solutions - Wikipedia The couple were on their honeymoon in India, where Jennifer had dreams of opening an orphanage. Cbc.ca. "I could have invested it in real estate. Likewise, the public was not much intrigued about their lives up until . 4 people named Gerald Betzen found in California, Texas and Massachusetts. There were other problems around that time. Forensic accountants discovered that Gerry was trading against fake users, crediting their account with fake currencies and pocketing the cash, using the proceeds to play the crypto market. https://bit.ly/3cAIH4j Newest Vid's https:. Was a recently-active Skype account proof he was still alive? [51], A documentary titled Dead Man's Switch: A Crypto Mystery about the story of Gerald Cotten premiered at the 2021 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Where Is Gerald Cotten's Wife, Jennifer Robertson Now? - Ecelebritymirror "At that point, we were desperate to recover funds and we were also convinced that a scam was underway," said QCX-INT, an individual who uncovered online documentation of Mr Cottens history of fraudulent behaviour, speaking anonymously to the CBC this year. Something was afoot. [3][4][5], Quadriga likely never invested the funds entrusted to it, according to Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency tracking firm. Since his death, Cotten has been recast as a habitual scammer who would enjoy the thrill of knowing he was duping his customers and investors. Mr Cottens story is now the subject of the documentary Dead Mans Switch: A Crypto Mystery, which streams on Discovery+, and in the new memoir of wife Jennifer Robertson, Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions. But the money, of course, was still missing. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops delivered daily to your inbox. In January 2014 they installed the second Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver. So what exactly happened to Cotten, and is he still alive somewhere sitting on a mountain of stolen crypto? Bankruptcy trustees have managed to recover around $34million from Quadriga and $12million in assests from Cotten's estate - but the rest remains locked away in the digital world of crypto. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Cotton's sudden death from complications of Crohn's disease aged 30 shocked the crypto world - but many believe he may have faked his death in an elaborate "exit scam". Supposedly, Cottens business associates didnt even know he was married. For instance, had Cottens death certificate, which spelled his name as Cottan, been faked? How did Gerald Cotten die? A Quadriga mystery, from India to Canada and - October, November, December - during all that time," he said. Up to C$250 million (US$190 million) in cryptocurrency owed to 115,000 customers was missing[2] or could not be accessed because only Cotten held the password to off-line cold wallets. His clients were locked out of about $250 million, and investigators later. Lived In Los Angeles CA, Austin TX, Van Nuys CA . Customers reported that once they arrived, there was nobody in the office, or that there was no cash to be disbursed. [30], According to Jennifer Robertson, Cotten's widow, he died on 9 December 2018 while travelling in India. Rather than pay customers via bank wires, they were told to come to a nondescript building in Laval, Quebec to pick up the cash. I put myself into a deep hole and the only way to dig out of it was to sell my house.. The user said that he left the company in 2016, and that the company was legitimate at the time. The thing about conspiracy theories, though, is that they mutate out of control very quickly, and arent always reflective of the latest evidence. The shocking story has been recounted in a new Netflix documentary, Trust No One: The Hunt For The Crypto King. 29 2022, Published 3:03 p.m. But when co-founder Cotten died during a honeymoon in India, the money was seemingly lost forever. Netflix has tried to get to the bottom of things in its new 90-minute doc; read on to uncover the wild tale of Gerald Cotten. Angry and suspicious investors congregated on Reddit and Telegram to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. The OSC tugged on the same thread, but neither could get hold of him. Using a reputable custodian to hold the private keys outside the company is perhaps the best option to ensure these codes are not lost, Erik Wilgenhof Plante, the former CCO of the exchange BeQuant, told The Independent at the time. While the large increase in volume increased commissions, it also caused cash-flow problems due to the exchange's reliance on external payment processors and its lack of a proper accounting system. Conspiracy theorists insist that Cotten faked his own death, however, as many irregularities surrounding his death began to circulate, including a copy of his misspelled death certificate and the fact that his funeral had a closed casket. Living a jet set life, he cruised the world on yachts, flew in private jets and investigators even released photos of piles of cash on his kitchen table. Like many in the industry, he framed his enterprise not merely as a financial tool, but a radical societal change, touting the crypto gospel in podcast appearances and videos on YouTube. Crypto CEO's Mysterious Death Will Be Made Into Netflix Doc But even the forensic accountants only managed to trace $46 million of the total $215 million customers had deposited onto the exchange. March 30, 2022. [42] Another three empty wallets were believed to possibly be owned by Quadriga. I could have put it in stocks. He was one of the wealthiest people in the crypto world, and his company was at its pinnacle. Thinking that Jennifer had murdered Cotten, the Telegram group spiraled out of control. The business was run from Cotten's encrypted laptop from Cotten's home in Fall River, Nova Scotia. "It just makes me more depressed about it," Zou told Sky News. [7] Meanwhile, in order to manage the finances of the company during the process, a third-party monitor, Ernst & Young, was appointed. Companies have backups, safeguards to protect against this kind of thing. And not even he thinks that Gerald is deadnor did he ever meet his wife. He passed away in 2018 with the secret of $250 million. pic.twitter.com/rGymJ5f9Or. Mr Patryn pled guilty in 2005 to working in an identity fraud ring, and did business under a company called Midas Gold as an intermediary with Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rican digital currency firm busted as one of the largest money laundering operations in history. Citing decomposition concerns, lawyers requested the exhumation be completed no later than spring 2020. Was he avoiding something or someone? I'm 99% sure he is still alive living nicely. "You appear dead for a few days, until you get the cure," the source said. The company's CEO and founder, Gerald William Cotten, allegedly died in 2018 after traveling to India. The documentary follows a group of Quadriga investors turned sleuths who dig into the suspicious death of Cotten and the millions of missing cryptocurrency they believe Cotten stole from them, according to a tweet from Netflix announcing the film. We just send money from our Bitcoin app directly to those paper wallets, and keep it safe that way. How Gerald Cotten, the "Crypto King," Really Died - Bustle Gerald Betzen (4 matches): Phone Number, Email, Address - Spokeo There was no autopsy on the body, for instance, and Cotten had signed his will two weeks after he diedleaving his riches to Jennifer. Then, the crypto millionaire suddenly died in India from complications from Crohn's disease about three years ago. [54], A 2021 8-episode podcast entitled Exit Scam followed the buildup of Quadriga, and investigated whether Gerald Cotten had faked his own death. One of the Globe reporters had a hunch that this was Gerry Cotten, and traced the account to another online den of thieves, BlackHatWorld. He hopes the Netflix doc will get authorities to "move their asses and do something about it" but also to raise awareness "so it doesn't happen to other people". Cops believe that Quadriga CX was actually an wide-ranging Ponzi scheme - and Cotten would use fake accounts under the name "Chris Markay" to "buy" his customers Bitcoin using fake cash. Gerald Cotten Really Dead ? Gerald Cotten Still Alive ? - Watch Full So the Globe goes to Cottens hospital in India to put the whole fake death thing to bed. Netflix Special on Bitcoin Fraudster Gerald Cotten, His Wife, and QuadrigaCX. The estate includes an airplane, a sailboat, a 2017 Lexus, and real estate in Nova Scotia and Kelowna, British Columbia. gerald cotten belize - Fullpackcanva.com G erald Cotten was 15 when he ran his first documented get-rich-quick scheme. Robertson has not been accused of any wrongdoing - and has denied any knowledge of her husband's business dealings. Their online exchange launched after the first month. Is Gerald Cotten Still Alive? Did He Really Die? - The Cinemaholic Then Cotten took a turn for the worse: he went into cardiac arrest three times; the third time, the doctors couldnt revive him and declared him dead. Then, out of the blue, one Mike Patryn joined the Telegram group that investors were using to discuss conspiracies. Dying from Crohn's disease when only 1.6% of sufferers from this disease die of it and to happen to die from . He was able to keep the venture, called S&S Investments, going for three months, before it folded and investors money was gone. In November 2018 the case was decided with the accounts going to the court to decide the ownership individually. His wife Jennifer Robertson said he had promised to create a mechanism that turned thepasswords over to her when he died. Gerald died while on a honeymoon with his wife Jennifer in India, Cotten has been recast since his death as a thrill-seeking scammer, Michael Patryn - real name Omar Dhanani - had previously been convicted of identity fraud, Bitcoin miner electrocuted to death by his computer after forcing it to churn out endless amounts of crypto. Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, was thought to have had sole access to the funds and coins exchanged on it. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/hiring-a-programmer-website-like-bitstamp-bitcoin-trading-project.605236/. started to be convinced that he was dead, after all. I took out three loans from the bank and put it all into crypto. The death, and the resulting collapse of Quadriga, set off a score of government and citizen investigations into how so much digital currency could be spirited away. Since his death, Cotten has been recast as a habitual scammer who would enjoy the thrill of knowing he was duping his customers and investors. Gerald Cotten (born 11 May 1988)[14] lived in Belleville, Ontario before attending the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. And for some, things still looked suspicious. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Investors are still hunting for millions in vanished cryptocurrencies, writes Josh Marcus, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Browse Locations. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. And, wildly, was Jennifer, his wife, even. Now . California (2) Massachusetts (1) Texas (2) Refine Your Search Results. Cotten neglected to pass on the passwords to the accounts, and in 2019, when investigators tracked down Cotten's digital wallets, all the money was gone. When Taylor Monahan, founder of MyCrypto, examined the exchanges cold wallets, she couldnt find the lost crypto. He convinced tons of investors to fork over their money so he could invest it into Crypto. Cryptocurrency investors locked out of $190m after exchange founder dies, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. But Cotten was a bad trader: losing money hand over fist, he gambled away about $150 million of customer funds. They surfed his social media accounts at first, then traced Cottens digital footprints even more closely for clues. Gerald Cotten. Cotten also took flying lessons as he appeared to be possibly preparing for a life on the run. His body was repatriated to . [31], Robertson filed an affidavit on behalf of the company which included a "Statement of Death" for Cotten, filed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 12 December 2018. Is Gerald Cotten really dead? : r/QuadrigaCX - reddit Zou resorted to the cryptocurrency scheme to avoid bank charges when moving Vancouver, shifting his money from the US to a Canadian account. Given the mysterious circumstances of his deathand the enormous amount of money he controlledits no surprise that conspiracies quickly sprang up in an attempt to piece together the puzzles around his death. Tong Zou is one of thousands of customers left seriously out of pocket following Gerald 'Gerry' Cotten's mysterious death in 2018 at the age of 30. [33] After the exchange was put into maintenance mode for several days in January, they announced on the 31st that they were applying for creditor protection. [37] According to an affidavit by the CEO's widow, approximately 115,000 customers are owed C$250 million (US$190 million), most of which was cryptocurrency held in Quadriga's cold wallet in the laptop that only the deceased CEO had access to. [27] Another payment processor used by Quadriga, Crypto Capital, was named in a civil suit filed by the New York Attorney General in April 2019. Was Patryn, whom employees described as a macho, terrifying character, calling the shots, not Cotten? **Warning Spoilers ahead for Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King**. [16] In 2014 only C$7.4 million worth of bitcoin were exchanged on Quadriga. However, in 2018, Bitcoin prices crashed and many began withdrawing their funds from Quadriga, except they were being met with error messages before the exchanges website stopped working in 2019. "[40][41], Ernst & Young found five Quadriga cold wallet addresses, but they were empty, containing no cryptocurrency since April 2018. April 2, 2022 Netflix Nobody was expecting Gerald Cotten, the CEO of Canadian Bitcoin exchange QuadrigaCX, to die at 30. A C$24.7 million disbursement fund has been planned with C$300,000 to go to Cotten's widow, Jennifer Robertson, who advanced that amount to start the court proceedings; C$200,000 will go to Ernst & Young and another C$250,000 to its lawyers; C$229,842 will go to Quadriga's lawyers; and C$17,000 to independent contractors. The crypto entrepreneur bought increasingly lavish purchases: a $600,000 yacht, a high-end Lexus, 17 homes in Canada, a plane. At this point, lots of investors think that Cotten, a man alleged to have a history of scamming, really had faked his own death. Netflix's latest true crime doc, "Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King", seeks to unravel the mystery of Gerald Cotten, the CEO of crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, who died in 2018. The funeral, according to a Redditor claiming to be a contractor for QuadrigaCX, said that it was a closed-casket affair, and that Jennifer was fake grieving and dancing at the funeral to bacchanalian excess, and even kicked out Geralds family. [17] In a 2014 interview, founder Gerald Cotten explained that the company stored customer funds on paper wallets in safe deposit boxes: "So we just send money to them, we dont need to go back to the bank every time we want to put money into it. Facebook / Remembering Gerry Cotten In the weeks since Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp. belatedly made his death public, the exchange's furious users have raised questions. Then in January, 2019, Cottens wife Jennifer Robertson announced that he had died a month earlier. Check out: Personal Finance Insider's picks for best cryptocurrency exchanges. So the. But, due to the strict security of crypto, we may never know. I ended up losing my life savings I lost $400,000, Tong Zou, a tech worker quoted in the film, says. Gerald Cleophas Betzen, 68. It's clear to me that Cotten gave himself millions of dollars worth of crypto as the owner to trade people fake crypto and give himself millions of dollars. He is believed to have scooped around around $115million in crypto from his own accounts and put them into high risk financial bets - many of which crashed, costing him more money than Quadriga ever actually made. Robertson has denied any knowledge of her husband's wrongdoing - and in 2019 returned $9million to the company to repay users. In their letter to the RCMP the law firm underlined the need for certainty around the question of whether Mr Cotten is in fact deceased. It apparently had no formal accounting system. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? The doctor stated that while dying from Crohns disease is very rare, Cotten appeared to show signs of illness and suffered from three heart attacks in the same day the paramedics were unable to resuscitate him after his third cardiac arrest. that after 2016, QuadrigaCX stopped producing consistent data about its holdings, and that large volumes of cryptocurrencies were being sent to foreign crypto exchanges. The OSC. [22][23] C$28 million held by Costodian, a Quadriga payment processor, was frozen by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in January 2018. Indeed, QuadrigaCX launched just three months after sceptre put out a call to build a crypto exchange. Gerald Gerry Cotten is the founder of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga Fintech Solutions and is at the helm of a groundbreaking investment scam that the Netflix documentary investigates. He died just nine days into his honeymoon due to an acute stomach ache. But Bitcoin crashed at the end of 2018, and Cottens flashy lifestyle needed cash to sustain itself. There's only two people who really know what happened in India. His wife has said she was "upset and disappointed" to learn about the extent of the fraud at her husbands company, writing in a 2019 statement, she wasnt aware or involved in Gerrys trading activities, nor his appropriation of customer funds." Did he Die? Investors who believed that Cotten had faked his own death and ran away with the money had made one huge assumption: that Cotten had money to steal. One of the. "Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King". He appointed his wife as the executor of his estate, handing over a $9million real estate empire, his yacht and his Cessna plane - and he even left his two dogs an inheritance of $100,000. There's also other posts on his Murdoch1337 account that are weird he asks for people to sell him old reddit accounts presumably because he would use these alt accounts to downvote people trying to slander his company or he would make posts on these alts saying how great Quadriga is. His death certificate spells his name wrong, he was supposedly buried in a closed casket in Canada even though there is no evidence his body was ever moved from India and why would it need to be a closed casket? They reported that Jennifer said she couldnt get into Cottens laptops, and found an affidavit from Robertson saying that she didnt understand how QuadrigaCX operatedeven though one of Robertsons companies later wired cash to some of Quadrigas customers. A big chunk of it was given to him by his parents. She had accompanied him to a hospital in Jaipur the previous day and he was diagnosed with septic shock, perforation, peritonitis, and intestinal obstruction. Evidence of him faking death: There's lots of bizaare things that are suspicious. name was not the same as Robertsons ex-husband, some angry investors lobbed death threats at Jennifer, convinced that she had murdered Cotten, too. The mystery of Cotten and Quadriga is now the subject of podcasts Exit Scam and A Death In Cryptoland. But the mingling didnt end there: the crypto kingpin also allegedly mixed client money with his own, according to investigators, funding the lavish lifestyle he became known for.
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