What Happened to Jennifer Robertson and Where Is Gerald Cotten's Wife Now? Quadriga CX was left owning its 76,000 investors around $215million (CAD). The company raised C$850,000 but cancelled plans to list on the exchange in early 2016. [24][25][26], According to court filings, Quadriga also used WB21 as a payment processor. Gerald Cotten, 30, held the virtual keys to a whopping $137 . [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. 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. **Warning Spoilers ahead for Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King**. Now Cottens jet-set lifestyle looked suspicious. Quadriga's customers are owed C$260 million in cryptocurrency and cash. Gerald Cleophas Betzen, 68. 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. The laptop computer from which Gerry carried out the companies business is encrypted and I do not know the password or recovery key. 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. [7][8] On 8 April 2019 the firm entered bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act as the possibility of a successful reorganization appeared to be remote. [43][44] On 13 December 2019, the court-appointed law firm representing the exchange's former users sent a letter to the RCMP asking that they exhume Cotten's body to confirm his identity and verify a cause of death. Angry and suspicious investors congregated on Reddit and Telegram to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. Thinking that Jennifer had murdered Cotten, the Telegram group spiraled out of control. But the money, of course, was still missing. Did he Die? In her memoir, Ms Robertson denies shes part of an elaborate plot to fake her husbands death, adding that speculation has led to death threats from stalkers demanding she returns the missing millions. Gerald 'Gerry' Cotten | FAKE Behind 'Hunt For The Crypto King' Netflix | Where Are They Now?Subscribe Here! The podcast was reported by Aaron Lammer and Lane Brown.[55]. [17] Michael Gastauer, Chief Executive of WB21, has been named in a civil lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a US$165 million fraud. 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? Then it emerged that Jennifer had legally changed her name three times in the past few years, and a man sharing one of her former last names was at the center of an unsolved murder case. "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. Indian authorities maintain that Cotten, whose body was repatriated to Nova Scotia for a small closed-casket funeral, died on Dec. 9, 2018, shortly after checking into a luxury hotel in Jaipur. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Netflix Special Explores Gerald Cotten's Wife and the QuadrigaCX Scandal Cotten and Patryn's past: He's also been linked to many other "Cryptocurrency markets" in the past with his old partner Patryn who has changed his name twice because he was charged with laundering money. Though some dont believe Mr Cotten is really gone, the money from Quadriga is. At first, the now-closed company allegedly blamed the delay on a legal issue with a bank. Like other crypto-exchanges, Quadriga kept its funds in so-called cold wallets, digital storage devices not connected to the internet, which are safe from hacking. ", "Vancouver crypto exchange, CIBC clash over frozen accounts", "Judge rules with CIBC, grants possession of disputed Quadriga funds to Ontario Superior Court", "The fintech 'genius' accused in $165m fraud", "Crypto Firm Cited in Bitfinex Case Had Also Worked With Quadriga", "Quadriga co-founder served time in U.S. for role in identity-theft ring, documents reveal", "Criminal Past Haunts Surviving Founder of Troubled Crypto Exchange", "Crypto firm CEO with $190 million password did die in Jaipur hospital", "Cryptocurrency Exchange Says It Can't Access $190 Million After CEO Unexpectedly Died", "Millions in cryptocurrencies frozen in Canada after only person who had password dies in India", "Crypto Exchange Founder Filed Will 12 Days Before He Died", "Quadriga CEO, whose death ignited a cryptocurrency storm, a kind man with taste for fine things, say friends", "Crypto Exchange Mystery Deepens as Board Seeks Court Protection", "Crypto exchange Quadriga files for creditor protection", "Quadriga mystery deepens with little evidence of cold wallets containing $250M", "A Crypto-Mystery: Is $136 Million Stuck or Missing? When Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten died suddenly in 2018, the passcodes for his cryptocurrency exchange died with him. Thinking that Jennifer had murdered Cotten, the Telegram group spiraled out of control. He graduated from York with a bachelor of business administration in 2010. He was able to keep the venture, called S&S Investments, going for three months, before it folded and investors money was gone. The OSC found that after 2016, QuadrigaCX stopped producing consistent data about its holdings, and that large volumes of cryptocurrencies were being sent to foreign crypto exchanges. , 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. There was no way of getting my money back. Robertson has denied any knowledge of her husband's wrongdoing - and in 2019 returned $9million to the company to repay users. At the time, he was the CEO of QuadrigaCX, a company that performed cryptocurrency exchanges. Fourteen trading accounts that were also examined were used to trade on other exchanges. 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. , initially diagnosed Cotten with little more than travelers diahrrea, but kept him in hospital just in case. 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. 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. Gerald Cotten was the founder of one of Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Quadriga CX. Zou trusted Quadriga CX, Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange, with C$500,000 (305,000). So his spiral down into a life of crime was either pure greed or him seeking the thrill. A big chunk of it was given to him by his parents. He launched QuadrigaCX in 2013, and it quickly became one of the largest crypto exchanges. The two first met in November 2014 and had been together for some time before tying the knot in October 2018. "[46] The Official Ontario Securities report on Quadriga is attached here. Either the funds were never received or quickly went missing. Image Credit: CTV Your Morning/YouTube. Some also believe that Gerald isnt even dead at all but rather hiding away with the hundreds of millions of dollars he controlled. What really happened to Gerald Cotten, Netflix's Crypto King? After some more digging, the reporter found an order form filled out by one Gerald Cotten. [1], The company's CEO and founder, Gerald William Cotten, allegedly died in 2018 after traveling to India. Gerald Cotten, 30, died abruptly in December 2018 of complications relating to Crohn's disease while on honeymoon in Jaipur, India, with his wife, Jennifer Robertson. Rather than pay customers via bank wires, they were told to come to a nondescript building in Laval, Quebec to pick up the cash. Things began to sour, however, in 2018, when the price of Bitcoin collapsed. The user said that he left the company in 2016, and that the company was legitimate at the time. But even the forensic accountants only managed to trace $46 million of the total $215 million customers had deposited onto the exchange. 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. About C$1.2 billion worth of bitcoin was exchanged on Quadriga. [42] Another three empty wallets were believed to possibly be owned by Quadriga. It certainly started to look like fraud, said one anonymous investor in the doc. We just send money from our Bitcoin app directly to those paper wallets, and keep it safe that way. Quadriga had four employees in 2015 with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, but ran out of money by June 2015. His will was signed off just two weeks before he and wife Jennifer Robertson travelled to India on their honeymoon. Companies have backups, safeguards to protect against this kind of thing. [33], Cotten's will was signed 27 November 2018, twelve days before he allegedly died. There was no autopsy on the body, for instance, and Cotten had signed his will two weeks after he diedleaving his riches to Jennifer. Gerald Cotten, who was born on May 11th, 1988, was raised in Belleville, Ontario, before relocating to Toronto to enroll at York University's Schulich School of Business. "So far, nothing's been found.