The Secret Life and Strange Death of Quadriga Founder Gerald Cotten

But blockchain analysts have yet to find any information that this money exists. But this only caused further strain on the largely-unmanned operation of Quadriga, with Cotten not even working from a permanent office space. Later that year, the company lost ethereum in a smart contract error costing them a further $14 million. Here’s everything you need to know about the man behind the mystery, and why some think he may not actually be dead after all.

If this doesn’t make sense, then it could be because the founders are trying to confuse you. Promises of a high or guaranteed return – Does the offer look realistic? His wife Jennifer Robertson said he had promised to create a mechanism that turned thepasswords over to her when he died.

CIBC stated that they could not determine the ownership of the money and could not contact Cotten or Quadriga. In November 2018 the case was decided with the accounts going to the court to decide the ownership individually. In June 2019, Ernst & Young released a report alleging that Cotten had used millions of dollars from Quadriga customers’ accounts for his own personal use, as CoinDesk reported at the time. In April 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission released a report showing that Cotten was operating Quadriga like a Ponzi scheme. He had spent around $24 million on personal expenses including real estate, travel, and vehicles.

Who Is Gerald ‘Gerry’ Cotten?

Three years after Cotten’s murky death, most of the missing money has yet to materialize; the majority of what was found can be tied to funds frozen by the Canadian bank. Some believe that he unsuccessfully gambled with his clients’ money, shifting it into different currencies and trying to arbitrage — buying and selling securities or currencies simultaneously to capitalize on price differentials. According to the documentary, Cotten had long suffered from Crohn’s disease but kept quiet about it.

In 2017, as the price of a Bitcoin shot to nearly $20,000, Quadriga processed nearly $2 billion in trades from 363,000 individual accounts. Given what the documentary tells us, it sounds like Gerry is really dead despite what online sleuths and conspiracy theorists might believe. Some of the reasons people believed he faked his death is that the funeral was closed casket, people don’t typically die from Crohn’s disease and a death certificate circulated with Gerry’s name misspelled. None of these are enough to prove Gerry faked his death and as for the certificate, I’m not even sure that was a real document. With nobody knowing the passwords to Cotten’s accounts, none of Quadriga’s funds (kept in off-line cold wallets) could be used to pay out its users.

The couple traveled abroad constantly, and they planned to sponsor a home for 12 children at an orphanage in India. Do your research – Check reviews online and Reddit threads to see what other people think. “At that time, there was nothing I could do. There was no way of getting my money back.

The mysterious death of a 30-yr-old conman who stole $215m in bitcoin

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. This includes his decision to change his will just nine days before he died, leaving everything to his wife of less than a year, Jennifer, including a $9.6 million estate and a $100,000 trust fund to look after their dogs. In December 2018, Gerry Cotten mysteriously died at the age of 30 during a trip to Jaipur, India. Officially, his death was ruled as a result of complications related to Crohn’s Disease, a lifelong condition that affects the bowel and large intestine and causes oftentimes painful inflammation. With the ever-present rise in popularity for Bitcoin, NFTs and cryptocurrency, the latest film delves into the theory that one man managed to fake his own death after becoming a star on the rise within the industry. But while in Jaipur, Cotten – who often suffered flare ups due to Crohn’s disease – fell ill, then went into septic shock and died a day later on December 9.

He was then admitted to a hospital for “symptoms of acute gastroenteritis.” He had vomited 10 times and had a background of Crohn’s disease. He spent the night in the hospital but then deteriorated suddenly. The 33-page report also concluded Cotten had opened Quadriga accounts under aliases and credited himself with fictitious currency and crypto asset balances, which he then traded with unsuspecting Quadriga clients. An official probe conducted by the Ontario Securities Commission was able to identify $46 million worth of assets, leaving an unexplained shortfall of $169 million. They later discovered that the bulk of that money had been frittered away on Cotten’s lavish lifestyle and making speculative trades in other cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin.

His will included provision to set aside $100,000 for his in-laws, for the care of the couple’s two dogs, if Robertson should die within 30 days of his death. Ernst & Young reported on 6 February 2019 that C$468,675 (US$354,300) of bitcoin were “inadvertently” sent to an inaccessible cold wallet. Federal Bureau of Investigation were reportedly investigating the company.

They wound up at the Fortis Escorts Hospital, a private hospital that offered superior medical service to most of India’s public hospitals. Dr. Abhishek Sharma, the general manager of the hospital, told VanderKlippe that Cotten “was admitted with symptoms of acute gastroenteritis.” He proceeded to vomit repeatedly and suffered diarrhea — not unusual symptoms for travelers in India. Nobody was expecting Gerald Cotten, the CEO of Canadian Bitcoin exchange QuadrigaCX, to die at 30. Cotten was young, energetic, passionate about cryptocurrency — so when he passed away in December 2018 during his honeymoon in India, due to “complications from Crohn’s disease,” everyone was taken by surprise. There’s not much else to say regarding his exact whereabouts unless you believe the theories that Gerry somehow faked his death and absconded with the money. It’s not a bad theory since The Hunt for the Crypto Kingindicates that Gerry had some grand plans for what to do with the money had he not died.

The company raised C$850,000 but cancelled plans to list on the exchange in early 2016. Quadriga had four employees in 2015 with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, but ran out of money by June 2015. Cotten’s death will likely remain a mystery, with some believing that he is still residing somewhere in the world with the stolen money. Reported by Fansided, Globe and Mail journalist Nathan Vanderklippe spoke to Dr. Sharma, who dealt with Cotten when he came into the hospital.

I lost $500,000 life savings in cryptocurrency after ‘trader DIED with password’

Patryn had said that Cotten was “like a little brother to me.” This was how those who had known both of them saw it too, though the characterization usually wasn’t intended as a compliment. At a time when the Bitcoin Co-op was a small group of crypto enthusiasts who met in each others’ apartments, Patryn wrote them an email out of the blue, expressing his support. They usually did the outreaching; nobody had reached out to them before. The major break in the investigation was not a revelation, exactly, but something that had been hiding in plain sight.

The doctor stated that while dying from Crohn’s 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. Netflix’s documentary definitely seems to be in the corner that Cotten did die, despite the mystery surrounding his death. Gerald Cotten is allegedly meant to have died from Crohn’s disease after the exchange crashed. Despite the speculation, there is currently no solid evidence that Cotten did fake his own death and abscond with the money.

• Gerald “Gerry” Cotten was initially believed to be a savvy entrepreneur who found success when he founded Quadriga Fintech Solutions in 2013, a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange.
• “The monitor’s third report indicated six so-called cold wallets used to store digital assets offline have been found, but all of them are empty.”
• The couple traveled abroad constantly, and they planned to sponsor a home for 12 children at an orphanage in India.
• You can read a lengthy court document from a monitor that assessed the situation after Cotten’s death here.
• Cotten’s death, and the loss of his keys, has been offered as a cautionary tale, when other instances of crypto-currency loss have come to light.

One Quadriga contractor claims today that the payment processor WB21, now the subject of federal lawsuits in the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, stole $14 million, and that another processor stole $5.8 million. He was driven to a private hospital and diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis. The following afternoon his condition deteriorated and blood tests indicated septic shock. Before doctors could stabilize him, his heart stopped; he was revived, and his heart stopped again. Barely more than 24 hours after the onset of a stomachache, he was pronounced dead.

There was no “dead man’s switch,” which would have sent the codes to a predetermined source in the event that accounts went unopened for a period of days. On November 13, 2019, approximately three weeks before his death, The Globe and Mail quoted Cotten’s reaction to a law-suit from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce . In January 2019 CIBC had frozen several accounts with $26 million CAD on deposit, claiming it couldn’t be sure who the funds actually belonged to.

‘Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields’ Explained: What Ultimately Happened To Clyde Hedrick & William Reece?

People who knew the pair remembered them as being two opposite people. Gerry’s friends mentioned how he used to often agree with whatever Michael said, and that the power imbalance what is defil between the pair was quite visible. When people noticed how money had been transferred to other exchanges abroad, the creditors concluded that there was a larger play at hand.

This was later discovered by accounting firms Ernst and Young in 2019. A spokesperson for the Fortis Escorts Hospital in Jaipur, India—the place listed on Cotten’s death certificate—told The Globe and Mail in February 2019 that Cotten was admitted to the hospital on Dec. 8. He was suffering from septic shock, perforation peritonitis, and an intestinal obstruction. He suffered two cardiac arrests on Dec. 9 and was declared dead that evening.

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. With him went all the passwords to access Quadriga’s approximately quarter billion US dollars in funds, leaving 76,000 angry investors https://cryptolisting.org/ high and dry and with some having lost their entire life savings. Still Cotten was not directly responsible for all of his troubles. Because Canadian banks refused to accept cryptocurrency businesses as clients, Quadriga had to rely on third-party processors, which levied outrageous fees and in some cases stole funds outright.

‘Welcome To Chippendales’ Ending, Explained: Is Steve Dead Or Alive? Who Inherited The Chippendales?

Before arriving in Jaipur, Cotten and Robertson had already traveled to some of India’s biggest tourist destinations, including the Taj Mahal and Varanasi. According to VanderKlippe’s reporting, they planned to stay in Jaipur for four days. Almost as soon as they arrived at the Oberoi Rajvilas, however, they left to seek medical care for Cotten.

Cotten was a computer nerd who had entered the right business at the right time and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The broad outlines of his story were blandly conventional, at least if you subtracted his interest in decentralized monetary systems. He grew up in a large brick house on a quiet suburban street in Belleville, “The Friendly City,” a waterfront community between Toronto and Montreal best known for its cheddar cheese.

Netflix

Gabby Petito’s Life With—And Death By—Brian LaundrieForensically examining Instagram accounts, interviews, and police reports, author Kathleen Hale reconstructs their relationship, and ultimately Petito’s murder. In October 2013, Cotten placed a job posting on an online forum, BlackHatWorld, that marketed frauds and stolen goods. He sought “a programmer who is familiar with Bitcoin” to develop a website that would serve as “an open market place, like a stock market, where people buy and sell Bitcoin.” The design had to be “simple, but professional” and it had to be built quickly. In isolation this might be written off as teenage hijinks—or at most light fraud.

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. Another payment processor used by Quadriga, Crypto Capital, was named in a civil suit filed by the New York Attorney General in April 2019.