He took to hisgrave the passcodesthat locked about $250 million in other people's assets in his exchange, QuadrigaCX. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. "I've already said it a million times now: I don't know.I'm tired of defending myself for something I didn't do.". Gerald Cotten, a Nova Scotia resident originally from Ontario, was 30 years old when he died suddenly while travelling in India on Dec. 9 -- leaving his virtual company, QuadrigaCX, without access . And the fact that he did what he did I carry his shame with me. I spent a couple of hours on the phone explaining the basics to an RCMP investigator and came away feeling like hed be much more comfortable with a dead body, a loaded gun, and a trail of blood.. That was our perception, at least., (Patryn has argued the reverse: that he quit Quadriga because he disagreed with Cottens decision to abandon the public listing. Netflixs Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King delves into the circumstances surrounding Gerrys death and what happened to the company after that. 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 wasnt intended as a compliment. Cotten ran his own succession of schemes throughout those years, during which he also attended an undergraduate honors program at York Universitys Schulich School of Business. 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. Sunnybrook is the largest yacht brokerage on Canadas east coast. We do not invest in stocks, bonds, shares, precious metals or antiques. Essentially, Gerry gambled away customer money through trading. Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem. He began to host the weekly meetups at Quadrigas office. Everybody is a genius, said Albert Einstein, and every Redditor is an Einstein. Crypto Long & Short News and analysis for the professional investor. Quadriga CEO's widow speaks out over his death and the missing crypto millions | CBC News Loaded. Im going to build a Bitcoin exchange. It promised within 48 hours (usually within 18) a return of 103% to 150%, possibly more. In its prospectus, Cotten wrote: Im afraid Im not going to fill this section of the page with the usual bumph about how your returns are made. The announcement followed news that Gerald Cotten, the company's 30-year-old CEO, had reportedly died under peculiar circumstances the month before, while on his honeymoon in India. They wanted answers. There were rumors of other employees taking similar trips. Their findings, though baroquely technical, could be distilled to a two-word conclusion: The initial portrait of Cotten that emerged in February 2018, once his death was announced through a Quadriga Facebook post, squared with the yacht salesmans impressions. And exhuming the body would be a really huge step. He was 30-years-old. In February 2014, six weeks after Quadriga launched, Mt. If Quadriga was conceived as a scam, what kind of scam was it? And I did think that was odd.". Most of these early acolytes were drawn to the digital currencys libertarian ethos, its promises of decentralization, transparency, speed, and independence from governments and financial institutions. "It never occurred to me [that he was breaking the law]," said Robertson. The Nova Scotia Supreme Court declared the company bankrupt and selected the accounting firm Ernst & Young to serve as its third-party monitor, responsible for securing the lost funds belonging to Quadrigas creditors. His name was Gerald Cotten, and he went by Gerry; his girlfriend was a property manager named Jennifer Robertson, or Jen; her two Chihuahuas, who liked to sun themselves on the deck as the. In October 2013, Cotten placed a job posting on an online forum, BlackHatWorld, that marketed frauds and stolen goods. Perhapsthis scenario goesCotten believed that the cryptocurrency bull market would continue indefinitely, leading to higher trading volumes and profits; Cotten would have forced Patryn out, knowing that with intensified public scrutiny, his past would become a liability. Early on, Robertson was also processing funds acting as a funnel for customer money on behalf of QuadrigaCX. Robertson said something Cotten said around the time they were drawing up the will didn't sit right with her. Furthermore, Gerry signed his will less than two weeks before his death, leaving all of his assets to Jennifer. The smiling boy wanted a big boat. He summoned a future in which the customer was already a proud captain astride a luxury pleasure vessel dividing a turquoise sea. Cotten was a computer nerd who had entered the right business at the right time and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. When Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten died suddenly in 2018, the passcodes for his cryptocurrency exchange died with him. At the time, he was the CEO of QuadrigaCX, a company that performed cryptocurrency exchanges. It was devoted to high-yield investment programs, or HYIPs, more commonly known as Ponzi schemes. It was quickly very clear that he wasnt who he said he was. Robertson said she understands many people have been hurt and lostlargesums due to the collapse of QuadrigaCX. QuadrigaCX founder's widow owns $7.5M in Nova Scotia real estate | CBC News Loaded. They always end our conversations with that question. QCXINT, the creditor and blockchain expert, said that the FBIs Vander Veer told him that with hundreds of millions of dollars missing and no body, its an open question. The only way to verify that the body Robertson brought home from India was Cotten is to exhume it. I dont get to hold myself blameless. Once, Cotten mentioned that his business partner was visiting Toronto and asked her to coffee. On their honeymoon in India, they intended to visit Robertson and Gerald Cotten House in Jaipur. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. On his personal YouTube channel (account name Gerryrulz) he had posted several dozen homemade videos as infantile as they were portentous: Gerry incinerating a $20 bill in his microwave; Gerry knocking over a Jenga tower with a giant teddy bear; Gerry stuck in an amusement park maze, repeating the same mistakes, unable to escape. Jennifer Robertson, the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald (Gerry) Cotten, will be allowed to keep more than $90,000 cash and a Jeep Cherokee in a settlement agreement with the company's. One day he showed up with Cotten, who behaved like a runt little brother but, as one friend put it, in a gross kind of waysycophantic, almost submissive. More than three years after the sudden death of Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten and the revelations that the company was a massive cryptocurrency scam, his widow, Jennifer Robertson, tells her side of the story. Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem. (TalkGold was run by twins Edward and Brian Krassenstein until 2016, when agents from the Office of Homeland Security seized their files and froze their assets but never charged them with a crime. Jennifer Robertson, whose husband Gerald Cotten died aged 30 during their honeymoon in India in 2018, opened up about her ordeal in a new book, Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions. He began his own HYIP chat site by December, and on January 1, 2004he was 15 and a halfhe launched his first pyramid scheme, S&S Investments. The will made no mention of the external hard drives, called cold wallets, in which Cotten had stored most of Quadrigas funds. Despite additional travailsa software glitch that lost C$14 million, a cease-trade order from the British Columbia Securities Commission after Cotten failed to file an audit, and CIBCs seizure of C$21 million from one of its payment processors after the bank failed to determine its rightful ownerQuadriga profited wildly from Bitcoins giddy rise. She said she wants to move on with her life and hopes her new book, BitCoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions, is the final chapter of the Quadrigascandal. He rejected Quadrigas application and forwarded his investigation to contacts in law enforcement. Seventy percent of the global Bitcoin trade was conducted through Mt. Around this time, Patryn changed the slug that appeared beneath his TalkGold posts to: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Benjamin Franklin.. When Cotten died, Jennifer and Cotten tied the knot a little earlier. Newsweek Newsletter sign-up > They married four years later in October 2018, living a. In January 2014 Salkeld posted a video on YouTube in which Cotten gently teaches his young daughters how to operate the Bitcoin ATM; Salkeld is certain that his two-year-old is the youngest person ever to have purchased Bitcoin. On May 24, 2013, federal agents in 17 countries arrested Liberty Reserves administrators, shuttering its website and seizing its records and bank accounts. His news career began on the morning of Sept. 3, 1998 following the crash of Swissair 111. He was driven to a private hospital and diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis. More than 75,000 Quadriga account holders also had questions. Which meant that Cotten was not really who he said he was either. This summer day, however, he was dead serious. Unsolved crimes attract amateur detectives, who canvass the internet for clues. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Government records also reveal that Robertson has used three family names. In this version of the story, scams beget scams and incompetence snowballs into recklessness and squander. Jack Julian joined CBC Nova Scotia as an arts reporter in 1997. The couple enjoyed the newfound wealth, traveling to exotic locations and buying properties in addition to a boat and a plane. They were to sponsor an orphanage in the country as well. Cotten said he had a helicopter license and offered to take Salkeld on a ride. Nine days later Cotten is believed to have died due to complications of Crohn's disease, with Robertson announcing the death publicly a month later. They asked me about 20 times if he was alive, says one witness who has intimate knowledge of Quadrigas workings and has been questioned by both agencies. Robertson owns two other properties in her own name, including an island in Mahone Bay the couple purchased in September 2017 from Fox News personality Tucker Carlsonfor $161,250 well below the island's tax-assessed value of $349,400. Under the Mastermind Theory, Cotten ran Quadriga much as he had S&S Investments and its successors, honoring enough withdrawal requests to maintain credibility. Still, the eulogies had a prismatic quality; viewed from an angle they suggested darker possibilities. The RCMP and the FBI have refused to comment, but some of their interview subjects have gotten the impression that they believe Cotten might not be dead. Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. Back in 2018, 30-year-old Cotten took a trip to India with his now widow Jennifer Robertson for their honeymoon and to open an orphanage. 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. Its just completely out of their wheelhouse, says a Quadriga creditor and cryptocurrency expert who was interviewed after publishing his findings online under the moniker QCXINT. It didn't take long for the withdrawals to become greater than Quadriga's profits. Theres no way that a man like Gerry, with all his knowledge and his mind-set, would leave it to chance. When Perklin read that Cotten was the only person with the passwords to the companys holdings and had made no contingency plan should he be unable to access them, whether because of incapacitation, kidnapping, or death, my jaw kept on dropping to the point where it couldnt have dropped anymore.. Gerald Cotten's widow, Jennifer Robertson, said he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at the age of 24, about a year after he co-founded QuadrigaCX with his partner Mike Patryn. Just days before they left, Cotten made out a will, leaving everything to Robertson, except for $100,000 he left to take care of his two dogs. In the public narrative that emerged, derived largely from a meticulously detailed investigation by Canadas Globe and Mail, Cotten fell sick nine days into his Indian honeymoon, shortly after checking into the Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur on December 8, 2018. Cotten passed away from complications that arose from Crohn's disease while on a honeymoon in Indiaapparently taking some $215 million of customer funds to the grave. In 2014 Cotten spoke publicly of moving currencies between exchanges to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities. The RCMP, which has jurisdiction over the case, has thus far not done so. She was apologetic about people losing their money, saying, I would have never, ever stolen from other people. It was also revealed that Cotten had written his will just four days before leaving for India. They were an odd pair. (For his part, Patryn says he hasnt seen any reason to think that [Cotten] is alive.). Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6. There were also the Lexus and the zippy single-engine airplane, a Cessna 400, which hed never tried to fly. "I would have never, ever stolen from other people. Likewise, the public was not much intrigued about their . She left behind a dozen teddy bears they had planned to deliver to the Jennifer Robertson and Gerald Cotten Home for Orphaned Children. There is yet another possibility, one that none of the cases investigators is willing to discount. In a statement released by her lawyer, she said she had no knowledge of Cottens improper business practices and was upset and disappointed when she learned of them through the investigation. She wonders why Robertson didn't think to question what was going on. Sure, he said. In its registration documents, Midas Gold listed as its contact gerald.cotten@gmail.com. Call it the Mastermind Theory. (Many who were born without white privilege, including nearly every Chinese person Ive met in Vancouver, has anglicized their name, says Patryn. The couple traveled abroad constantly, and they planned to sponsor a home for 12 children at an orphanage in India. The media dragged Gerald Cotten's wife, Jennifer Robertson, into the spotlight after his mysterious death. Dhanani, who was known on another message board as an expert in washing funds, was arrested in Southern California, where he was living with his family. And Ill carry that shame with me, probably, every single day for the rest of my life.. Twelve properties are currently held by Robertson Nova Property Management Ltd., a company registered toRobertson's home address. It put us in a particular place of need.. Robertson and Cotten met on a Tinder date in 2014, when they were both around 26 years old. Within hours of the announcement of Cottens death, a crowdsourced, scrupulously documented investigation, applying the logic and methodology of the blockchain, was afoot. Exit Scam: The Death and Afterlife of Gerald Cotten. She believed in him. After hearing that Patryn had been bragging all over Vancouver about his talent for laundering money, Mueller unearthed the connection to Dhanani. In February 2019, Jennifer insisted she was not privy to the companys business, asserting that Gerry was solely responsible for its dealings. The exchange took a cut of every transaction. Every Bitcoin transaction appears in a public ledgerthe blockchainthat can be consulted by anybody with internet access. She lives in Halifax. "I hadn't understood how Quadriga had held money in the first place;I thought it was just a trade," she said. 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. The widow of the man behind what was once Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange is finally sharing her side of the story afterhis suddendeath three years ago. On the polished granite island are a vase of pink roses, the discarded lid of an ice cream carton, a copy of National Geographic, and dozens of dictionary-thick, rubber-banded stacks of Canadian currency in crisp 20s, 50s, and 100s. Cotten's com." The Walrus on Instagram: "Jennifer Robertson met her husband, Bitcoin entrepreneur Gerald Cotten, on Tinder. During that time Quadriga continued to accept new funds but returned none. In October 2004, TalkGold members began to debate whether Patryn might in fact be Omar Dhanani, one of 28 suspects who had been arrested by the U.S. Secret Service in a global sting operation targeting an online marketplace for stolen credit card information and forged documents. In December 2018, Cotten died during his honeymoon with his wife, Jennifer Robertson, in Jaipur, India. Speaking on CTV's Your Morning Tuesday, Robertson said the aftermath of her husband Gerald Cotten's sudden death from complications of Crohn's disease has haunted her, after it quickly became. Midas Gold was an intermediary between Liberty Reserve and its traders, transferring cash into digital currency and back again, ensuring that no centralized record of clients existed. The brutal murders of four Idaho college students shocked millions. The following afternoon his condition deteriorated and blood tests indicated septic shock. ^ "Quadriga CEO's widow speaks out over his death and the missing crypto millions". As the cryptocurrency soared in value, Robertson and Cotten lived a life of luxury that included exotic vacations, luxury vehicles, a yacht and a Cessna aircraft. According to the authorities, about $169 million of the funds were missing, with five of the six cold wallets used to store the cryptocurrency being empty since April 2018. The Protocol Exploring the tech behind crypto. He might even be eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. The company took a cut from every Bitcoin trade on its platform. Gerald Cotten was a like a dream to . He wore a wrinkled golf shirt, cargo shorts, and beat-up Birkenstocks, and he was obscenely young, with sandy hair and pale skin that appeared not to have seen sunlight since puberty. Robertson isn't under investigation and has never faced criminal charges. Then he flew to India, where things managed to get even worse. Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyones Bracing for Apocalypse. But users claimed they received deposits from Jennifer directly, seemingly contradicting her statement. Perklin said he has no evidence Cotten is still alive, however. This was the detail that most shocked cryptocurrency professionals. A couple of years after graduation, Cotten moved to Vancouver and joined a clubby community of entrepreneurs who had become enamored with Bitcoin. He figured that Dhanani had friends in the underworld and in federal law enforcement. Cotten knew the catchphrases and the talking points, but he seemed most interested in Bitcoins speculative possibilities. They wanted revenge. The yacht salesman had questions, though it was not his job to ask questions. Eventually, an investigation revealed that Gerry had committed fraud using customer money. In this way Cotten could have stowed away a fortune in foreign bank accounts in preparation for a grand exit. Cotten built his career on the insight that most people are willing to believe most of what they are told most of the time. Crypto Long & Short News and analysis for the professional investor. Robertson had already been briefly married. All rights reserved. According to her, Gerry was in charge of the accounts by then. Gerald Cotten. In Ernst & Youngs phraseone imagines its battalion of stern accountants in various shades of apoplexytypical segregation of duties and basic internal controls did not appear to exist. Most years Cotten neglected to file a personal tax return. The following afternoon Robertson returned with the body to Canada. This meant that multiple customers were missing over $180 million. Now recruiting: Nova Scotia starts testing foreign-trained family doctors, Meet the student who went straight from a Kenyan refugee camp to Acadia, Home repair program in Yarmouth County aims to patch gaps in getting help, CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices. To remind, Gerald Cotten, died from complications of Crohn's disease while on a visit to India. Quadrigas entire board resigned, leaving Cotten as Quadrigas only full-time employee. They married four years later in October 2018, living a luxury lifestyle, including. Cotten provided withdrawals manually, seeming to give preference to the customers who complained loudest in public forums. Gerald "Gerry" Cotten died in 2018, taking with him a password to access funds Photo credit: Netflix. His name was Gerald Cotten, and he went by Gerry; his girlfriend was a property manager named Jennifer Robertson, or Jen; her two Chihuahuas, who liked to sun themselves on the deck as the Gulliver negotiated the islands and shoals of Mahone Bay, were Nitro and Gully. He seemed like the kind of guy who might retire early to an island somewhere. A month passed before Robertson announced on Quadrigas Facebook page that Cotten had died. He also accepted cash deposits. Jennifer Robertson is the widow of Gerald Cotten, who died suddenly in India in December, leaving his business in chaos and as much as $180 million of cryptocurrency locked in his encrypted laptop and USB keys. Less than three months later, the Quadriga Fund was dead, and Quadriga CX went live. Robertson said she trusted Cotten, and anyquestions were explained away because banks were very "anti-bitcoin" and there were problems exchanging cryptocurrency for cash through traditional means. After his wife, Jennifer Robertson, announced his death on Facebook in January 2019, conspiracy theories quickly began circulating amongst Quadriga users who believed Cotten wasn't dead at. The year after Robertson met Cotten, the value of cryptocurrency plummeted. When S&S suspended operations three months later, taking most of its clients funds with it, Patryn took to TalkGold to defend Cottens integrity. His clients were locked out of about $250 million, and investigators later found widespread fraud. Here's everything you need to know, had been moving money from the exchange into his personal accounts, she agreed to forfeit $12 million in assets, to wait weeks before letting investors know, CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices. Or Michael from Italy. Overnight, Quadriga became Canadas dominant Bitcoin marketplace. Canadian real estate developer Jennifer Robertson met Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten on Tinder in 2014. 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. But when the banks, the law, and the forces of Reddit tried to track down the cash, it turned out the young mogul may not have been who he purported to be. She was allowed to keep money, a car, her wedding band, some jewelry, and shares in Quindraga Fintech, among other things. While he lost thousands of dollars when Quadriga shut down, he said adding up the losses of friends and family to whom he had recommended the trading platform, the totalsits at more than $1 million. Gerald had a clean record, he could speak to the masses, while Michael operated the back end. (Patryn: I would say that the opposite is more accurate. However, the couple never arrived at the house, and the honeymoon did not go as planned. "Details emerging about Gerald Cotten, the young founder of QuadrigaCX". In India, Cotten remarked, the Canadian dollar went a long way. After learning of his death, one of his contractors immediately went to the house and searched for it. After Cotten's death, she agreed to forfeit $12 million in assets that included vehicles and real estate. Gerry was a very careful person who well understood the need to back up ones private keys. His death left investors locked out of their money and left Jennifer Robertson, Gerry's wife, to deal with the fallout. Among those Mueller warned was Amber Scott, an anti-money-laundering expert at a compliance firm in Toronto called Outlier Solutions. The strangely familiar nightmare of impeaching Trump Clues to the identity of Anonymous, who wrote the explosive White House op-ed Former Fox News staffers demand to be released from their NDAs Why crypto-crooks have their sights set on Iceland A sustained booing reveals Trumps true face From the archive: A portrait of Kim Jong Un, part man, part myth. If you blur your eyes, this narrativeGerry Tries to Make Goodnearly coheres. A year before his death he sent a colleague a photograph taken in the kitchen of his Kelowna home. Im Mike. But it came from a place of organizationhe knew what he was doing. He ranted about his hatred of scam artists, though his definition of the term seemed rather idiosyncraticidentity theft was a clean, bloodless business, but when you lied to someones face, it was unforgivable. Subsequently the brothers would gain Twitter notoriety for their incessant attacks on Donald Trump before they were shut down for operating fake accounts and purchasing followers.) Jennifer now lives in Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, with her two pet dogs. By that point, however, a new Gerald Cotten venture was already six months old. The circumstances around Cotten's sudden death left investorswith questions. Best Known As Gerald Cotten's Wife Jennifer Robertson's Husband Died On Their Honeymoon Cotten's Death Had The Crypto World In A Frenzy Has Disappeared From The Limelight Gerald Cotten was the founder of QuadrigaCX, once Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The yacht salesman had questions, though it was not his job to ask questions. He was busy. Deeds for properties she bought in 2016 show she was once known as Jennifer Forgeron. It seemed like they had an understanding, and shared motives. In the months that followed,investigatorsuncovered that Cotten had been moving money from the exchange into his personal accountsand engaging in other suspicious behaviour. There were limits, furthermore, to the scope of the monitors investigation. The pizzas cost about $25, setting the price of a Bitcoin at one fourth of a penny. Jennifer Robertson, the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald (Gerry) Cotten, will be allowed to keep more than $90,000 cash and a Jeep Cherokee in a settlement agreement with the company's bankruptcy trustee. It may be that he traded Quadrigas funds in a frantic effort to recoup the losses he had sustained. In isolation this might be written off as teenage hijinksor at most light fraud. You couldnt hook up your bank account to anywhere. The chat is also frequented by journalists, detectives from the FBI and RCMP, and several of the targets of the ongoing criminal investigations, including Patryn, whose exact whereabouts have been unknown for about a year. Cottens trades were so bizarre, and so risky, that this seemed plausiblejust as plausible, perhaps, as the idea that Cotten believed a series of Hail Mary bets on Zcash would come through.
