1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Downloaded from
YTS.MX

2
00:00:06,006 --> 00:00:08,008
[mysterious music playing]

3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

4
00:00:12,887 --> 00:00:14,639
[distorted voice]
I never knew who Gerry was.

5
00:00:15,807 --> 00:00:18,643
My name is Gerald Cotten,
and I'm the founder of QuadrigaCX.

6
00:00:23,356 --> 00:00:25,650
[wolf man] And I actually
didn't need to know who Gerry was.

7
00:00:26,234 --> 00:00:28,862
When you're conducting
business across the Internet,

8
00:00:29,779 --> 00:00:34,784
you're putting your trust in
this little kind of veneer of the website.

9
00:00:34,868 --> 00:00:35,744
[computer dings]

10
00:00:35,827 --> 00:00:40,498
It's a bunch of HTML pages
cobbled together with string and tape.

11
00:00:40,582 --> 00:00:44,669
Strip the veneer away and you
realize how actually fragile that is

12
00:00:45,545 --> 00:00:48,631
and that actually
behind that website are real people.

13
00:00:48,715 --> 00:00:51,134
[clicking]

14
00:00:51,217 --> 00:00:54,637
And it's those people
that you need to trust.

15
00:00:54,721 --> 00:00:56,681
[mysterious music continues]

16
00:01:02,270 --> 00:01:03,605
[computer chimes]

17
00:01:04,189 --> 00:01:06,566
This is a real mystery
that's unfolding this morning,

18
00:01:06,649 --> 00:01:08,902
and it all has to do
with the death of Gerald Cotten,

19
00:01:08,985 --> 00:01:12,822
along with
the disappearance of $250 million.

20
00:01:16,785 --> 00:01:18,036
Where is this money?

21
00:01:18,119 --> 00:01:20,955
[reporter]
About 110,000 customer accounts.

22
00:01:21,039 --> 00:01:24,209
[man 2] This was all my money,
my life savings, everything.

23
00:01:24,292 --> 00:01:25,168
[computer chimes]

24
00:01:25,251 --> 00:01:27,962
[reporter 2] It puts this whole
Bitcoin world in the crosshairs.

25
00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:33,343
There's some people suggesting
that maybe he's not dead.

26
00:01:36,179 --> 00:01:39,891
[woman] Allegedly, Gerry faked
his own death and ran off with the money.

27
00:01:39,974 --> 00:01:44,229
He was now in hiding and had had
his face modified by a plastic surgeon.

28
00:01:44,813 --> 00:01:46,314
[man laughing]

29
00:01:47,107 --> 00:01:48,858
[man 3]
He could be a citizen of 20 countries

30
00:01:48,942 --> 00:01:51,486
under 20 different faces
and 20 different names.

31
00:01:53,571 --> 00:01:55,406
Okay, now scan the QR code…

32
00:01:55,490 --> 00:02:00,954
[man 4] He doesn't come off
as a sophisticated criminal mastermind.

33
00:02:01,037 --> 00:02:03,123
[whirring]

34
00:02:03,206 --> 00:02:04,415
[chuckles]

35
00:02:04,999 --> 00:02:07,669
[wolf man] There were
so many different pieces to the story.

36
00:02:07,752 --> 00:02:09,462
So many questions.

37
00:02:09,546 --> 00:02:10,421
[phone chimes]

38
00:02:10,505 --> 00:02:12,257
[man 5] We need to get
to the bottom of this.

39
00:02:13,216 --> 00:02:18,096
[woman 2] It turned into a shit tornado
of catastrophic proportions.

40
00:02:19,472 --> 00:02:21,933
[computer chiming]

41
00:02:26,563 --> 00:02:30,441
[man 3] Either I know a guy who screwed up
and lost a quarter billion,

42
00:02:30,525 --> 00:02:33,611
or I know a guy who pulled off one
of the greatest crimes in history.

43
00:02:33,695 --> 00:02:36,364
[suspenseful music playing]

44
00:02:45,540 --> 00:02:47,542
[mysterious music playing]

45
00:02:52,922 --> 00:02:54,924
[man 6] Bitcoin can change the world.

46
00:02:55,592 --> 00:02:56,801
That's my belief.

47
00:02:57,468 --> 00:03:00,013
I believe that Gerry
thought the same thing.

48
00:03:08,104 --> 00:03:10,773
Bitcoin is counterculture.

49
00:03:10,857 --> 00:03:16,362
There's an element of rebellion to it,
and in that regard, you could say, uh,

50
00:03:16,446 --> 00:03:19,115
there's a bit of rock and roll
going on to Bitcoin.

51
00:03:19,616 --> 00:03:21,367
But a lot of crypto people

52
00:03:22,452 --> 00:03:26,456
either are paranoid
or specifically distrust people.

53
00:03:26,539 --> 00:03:29,083
Trust is not common in my industry.

54
00:03:29,167 --> 00:03:31,794
I bet a lot of them
did not agree to do this.

55
00:03:32,754 --> 00:03:34,756
[energetic music playing]

56
00:03:40,220 --> 00:03:42,430
[man 3] There's only so much time
to, uh, exercise

57
00:03:42,513 --> 00:03:44,933
when you're living the crypto life,
so you do what you can.

58
00:03:49,395 --> 00:03:52,148
Me, I'm, u…
I'm really, like, a number guy.

59
00:03:52,232 --> 00:03:53,775
I don't do words. I do numbers.

60
00:03:53,858 --> 00:03:56,069
Yeah, I definitely trust technology
more than I do people.

61
00:03:58,988 --> 00:04:00,156
That's awesome.

62
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:02,784
When I first heard about Bitcoin,
it was, like, early 2013.

63
00:04:02,867 --> 00:04:04,786
I'd found the local community here.

64
00:04:04,869 --> 00:04:06,913
Uh, we were just meeting
in restaurants once a week

65
00:04:06,996 --> 00:04:08,998
and just talking about Bitcoin.

66
00:04:09,082 --> 00:04:11,459
You know, the same
eight to 12 people every time.

67
00:04:12,043 --> 00:04:15,546
It was through the Bitcoin co-op
and community that I met Gerry Cotten.

68
00:04:21,386 --> 00:04:23,554
Gerald, starting with you.

69
00:04:23,638 --> 00:04:25,473
-Yes.
-What's your story?

70
00:04:25,556 --> 00:04:27,725
You were born. Now you're here.
What happened in between?

71
00:04:27,809 --> 00:04:29,060
[chuckles]

72
00:04:30,561 --> 00:04:34,315
Gerry came across
friendly, positive, upbeat.

73
00:04:36,109 --> 00:04:37,568
He always laughed.

74
00:04:37,652 --> 00:04:40,613
Like, I don't know
what Gerry would look like angry.

75
00:04:40,697 --> 00:04:42,740
[man 7] Gerry's stuck in the maze.

76
00:04:46,119 --> 00:04:47,870
[laughs]

77
00:04:47,954 --> 00:04:52,917
Everyone that was part of that scene
at the time was definitely very nerdy.

78
00:04:53,001 --> 00:04:55,044
[whirring]

79
00:04:55,128 --> 00:04:58,715
I wouldn't describe any of us
as really fitting in anywhere.

80
00:04:59,299 --> 00:05:01,801
[Gerry laughs]

81
00:05:02,468 --> 00:05:05,763
Everyone has a thing they're a nerd
about, and they just like that thing.

82
00:05:05,847 --> 00:05:07,265
I think it's all right.

83
00:05:08,266 --> 00:05:10,101
It seems like Gerry's was business.

84
00:05:10,184 --> 00:05:12,228
[Gerry] Bitcoin is a digital currency.

85
00:05:12,729 --> 00:05:16,733
It's basically like you have cash,
but it exists only in digital form.

86
00:05:16,816 --> 00:05:23,156
Gerry was an incredibly charming,
very smart promoter of the technology.

87
00:05:23,823 --> 00:05:25,908
The Bitcoin community
is trying to move away

88
00:05:25,992 --> 00:05:30,496
from the traditional forms of currency
and into this modern, digital currency,

89
00:05:30,580 --> 00:05:33,249
which doesn't have the bureaucracy
of the banks.

90
00:05:33,750 --> 00:05:36,169
Smart, um, and knew it.

91
00:05:36,753 --> 00:05:39,422
But one of the hardest parts
was acquiring the Bitcoin.

92
00:05:39,505 --> 00:05:40,757
Especially in Canada.

93
00:05:41,424 --> 00:05:44,719
So I created QuadrigaCX in 2013

94
00:05:44,802 --> 00:05:46,929
for buying and selling Bitcoin.

95
00:05:47,013 --> 00:05:50,224
[Gerry] So for those who aren't familiar
with Bitcoin exchanges and what we do,

96
00:05:50,308 --> 00:05:52,393
I like to compare it to a stock exchange.

97
00:05:52,477 --> 00:05:56,189
However, instead of trading stocks
in our exchange, people trade Bitcoin.

98
00:05:57,190 --> 00:05:58,524
[Amber] In its simplest form,

99
00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:03,571
a cryptocurrency exchange is
something that would allow you to exchange

100
00:06:03,654 --> 00:06:06,741
between Bitcoin and dollars,
dollars and Bitcoin.

101
00:06:07,909 --> 00:06:08,951
[beeps]

102
00:06:09,035 --> 00:06:11,496
And they make money by taking a fee

103
00:06:11,579 --> 00:06:14,123
for each
of those trades that they process.

104
00:06:18,252 --> 00:06:20,463
[Alex] The Bitcoin Club
had just been going to restaurants

105
00:06:20,546 --> 00:06:23,800
and just trying to find a place
to let us sit and talk about Bitcoin.

106
00:06:23,883 --> 00:06:26,677
When the Quadriga office opened,
Gerry kind of invited us all in, um,

107
00:06:26,761 --> 00:06:29,514
the whole community, and he said,
"You can just come here and hang out."

108
00:06:29,597 --> 00:06:31,557
"This can be
the place we talk about Bitcoin."

109
00:06:32,683 --> 00:06:36,646
You know, people had really high hopes
Quadriga would help legitimize Bitcoin.

110
00:06:36,729 --> 00:06:39,107
I see it as a pivotal moment
in the Bitcoin space.

111
00:06:39,899 --> 00:06:44,070
It's basically a new chapter as we move
towards the mainstream financial industry.

112
00:06:44,946 --> 00:06:48,699
[Andrew]
We were at the meetup having Bitcoin beers

113
00:06:48,783 --> 00:06:53,037
when, uh, someone said,
"Guys, check the Bitcoin price."

114
00:06:53,121 --> 00:06:55,248
It is the hottest currency in the world.

115
00:06:55,331 --> 00:06:57,875
Bitcoin's value has skyrocketed.

116
00:06:57,959 --> 00:07:01,087
The chart looks like the left-hand side
of an Eiffel Tower.

117
00:07:01,170 --> 00:07:04,549
And we all took out our phones
and started yelling like, "Oh my God!"

118
00:07:04,632 --> 00:07:06,634
"Guys, look. Oh my God! Look at it go."

119
00:07:06,717 --> 00:07:09,345
[reporter 3]
Bitcoin's value reached $11,000.

120
00:07:09,429 --> 00:07:10,263
12,000.

121
00:07:10,346 --> 00:07:11,556
[reporter 4] $15,000.

122
00:07:11,639 --> 00:07:13,057
$17,000.

123
00:07:13,141 --> 00:07:15,059
$18,000.

124
00:07:15,143 --> 00:07:18,271
The new currency is making
a lot of people rich.

125
00:07:18,354 --> 00:07:20,398
Ten years ago, it didn't even exist.

126
00:07:20,481 --> 00:07:22,442
I have to say
I'm feeling a bit of FOMO here.

127
00:07:23,025 --> 00:07:28,406
Bitcoin went from relative obscurity
to front page news.

128
00:07:28,489 --> 00:07:30,616
[reporter 5]
Bitcoin is becoming mainstream.

129
00:07:30,700 --> 00:07:33,995
Every bar I go into,
the bartender wants to talk about Bitcoin.

130
00:07:34,078 --> 00:07:38,207
When Quadriga was founded in 2013,
when Bitcoin was only worth $100,

131
00:07:38,291 --> 00:07:41,002
if you fast-forward all the way
to near the end of 2017,

132
00:07:41,085 --> 00:07:44,130
we had our, uh, touch of $20,000 Bitcoin.

133
00:07:44,213 --> 00:07:47,133
People would say, "Where should I get
Bitcoin?" I would say, "QuadrigaCX."

134
00:07:47,216 --> 00:07:49,385
[narrator] Introducing QuadrigaCX…

135
00:07:49,469 --> 00:07:53,097
If you had an interest in Bitcoin and were
in Canada, you'd heard of Quadriga.

136
00:07:53,181 --> 00:07:55,600
When we began,
we were a relatively small company,

137
00:07:55,683 --> 00:07:57,768
trading just a few Bitcoins every day.

138
00:07:57,852 --> 00:07:59,145
However, over the past year,

139
00:07:59,228 --> 00:08:01,731
we've grown to become
the largest exchange in the country.

140
00:08:01,814 --> 00:08:03,816
[applause]

141
00:08:05,902 --> 00:08:08,613
Every time there's a wave of adoption,
it's good and bad.

142
00:08:08,696 --> 00:08:10,239
You get a few new believers

143
00:08:10,323 --> 00:08:12,533
and a whole lot
of new people trying to get rich.

144
00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:29,175
Hi, everyone. My name's Tong,
and I'm a Chinese Canadian,

145
00:08:29,258 --> 00:08:30,801
and welcome to my YouTube channel.

146
00:08:30,885 --> 00:08:34,263
On my YouTube channel, there's a lot
of different types of videos.

147
00:08:35,097 --> 00:08:37,141
[whirring]

148
00:08:38,518 --> 00:08:42,355
[Tong] And I hope you enjoy watching them
as much as I enjoy making them.

149
00:08:42,855 --> 00:08:44,273
And, uh, thanks for watching.

150
00:08:45,650 --> 00:08:48,653
I was in San Francisco.
You know, I'm a software engineer.

151
00:08:48,736 --> 00:08:51,739
Even though software engineers
make good salaries in San Francisco,

152
00:08:51,822 --> 00:08:57,745
after working with virtually no stop
for the past, um, seven, eight years,

153
00:08:58,329 --> 00:09:01,624
I wanted to quit.
Travel or do something like that.

154
00:09:04,835 --> 00:09:08,381
A lot of my friends made a lot of money
on cryptocurrency.

155
00:09:09,131 --> 00:09:11,717
They were making hundreds
of thousands of dollars at the time.

156
00:09:16,389 --> 00:09:18,307
Oh my gosh. Look at this thing!

157
00:09:18,391 --> 00:09:19,642
[engine revs]

158
00:09:20,434 --> 00:09:24,480
In 2011, I bought Bitcoin at $2.52.

159
00:09:24,564 --> 00:09:30,653
And so, technically,
this Lamborghini only cost me about $115.

160
00:09:30,736 --> 00:09:33,155
[engine revs]

161
00:09:33,239 --> 00:09:35,366
[man 8] Whoo-hoo!

162
00:09:37,034 --> 00:09:40,246
So I was like,
"Okay, I gotta get some money too,"

163
00:09:40,329 --> 00:09:42,498
so I just took out three loans.

164
00:09:42,582 --> 00:09:44,709
It was about $85,000 in total.

165
00:09:44,792 --> 00:09:48,045
And I put it all
into different cryptocurrencies.

166
00:09:48,838 --> 00:09:49,922
[grunts]

167
00:09:50,006 --> 00:09:52,633
Nobody has the patience
to wanna get rich slow.

168
00:09:52,717 --> 00:09:54,385
I wanted to keep up with my friends.

169
00:09:56,429 --> 00:09:57,513
Ah.

170
00:09:57,597 --> 00:09:58,681
Yeah, that's good.

171
00:10:00,891 --> 00:10:04,312
[Gerry] As of now, Canada's approximately
one percent of the global trading volume.

172
00:10:04,395 --> 00:10:06,063
So as we expand globally,

173
00:10:06,147 --> 00:10:08,941
we'll be able to grow and
our profits will increase dramatically.

174
00:10:10,359 --> 00:10:11,819
[man 9] And let me paint the picture.

175
00:10:11,902 --> 00:10:15,781
Mr. Cotten looks probably exactly what you
think an Internet genius would look like.

176
00:10:15,865 --> 00:10:17,450
-A young, attractive man.
-[Gerry laughs]

177
00:10:17,533 --> 00:10:20,453
So, yeah, yeah, he's exactly
what you picture in your mind.

178
00:10:20,536 --> 00:10:22,705
How many coins
did you buy at a time like this?

179
00:10:22,788 --> 00:10:24,165
[Gerry] Oh, like, a hundred.

180
00:10:24,248 --> 00:10:25,082
[man 9] Really?

181
00:10:25,166 --> 00:10:27,084
[Gerry] It was very profitable. And--

182
00:10:27,168 --> 00:10:30,087
[man 9] Are we hanging out with Mark
Zuckerberg? Is that what's going on?

183
00:10:30,171 --> 00:10:31,839
[Gerry laughs]

184
00:10:32,548 --> 00:10:37,595
In 2017, they did so well,
like, everything's falling in your lap.

185
00:10:37,678 --> 00:10:41,641
Um, probably millions. No, not probably.
Definitely tens of millions.

186
00:10:43,309 --> 00:10:44,685
He was buying a plane.

187
00:10:46,228 --> 00:10:47,229
Buying a boat.

188
00:10:48,022 --> 00:10:50,691
A little island, too, apparently.

189
00:10:51,442 --> 00:10:53,152
He started acquiring properties.

190
00:10:56,947 --> 00:10:58,783
And had been recently married.

191
00:11:00,534 --> 00:11:01,744
Here we go.

192
00:11:01,827 --> 00:11:05,122
[Amber]
He was not flashy when he was here.

193
00:11:05,206 --> 00:11:08,125
He was
a button-down shirt, jeans type of guy.

194
00:11:08,209 --> 00:11:11,545
-Now he was living the high life.
-[Gerry] …away!

195
00:11:11,629 --> 00:11:13,631
[uplifting music playing]

196
00:11:15,966 --> 00:11:21,430
Traveling around the world
and was living a digital nomad lifestyle.

197
00:11:23,599 --> 00:11:27,019
And just working from wherever he was,
which was fantastic.

198
00:11:41,784 --> 00:11:43,994
Bitcoin rose and rose and rose.

199
00:11:46,706 --> 00:11:48,207
And ultimately, it crashed.

200
00:11:53,504 --> 00:11:54,505
And, uh,

201
00:11:55,339 --> 00:11:59,802
I think that was the beginning
of troubles at QuadrigaCX.

202
00:12:02,513 --> 00:12:07,101
The Bitcoin roller coaster
continues to be on a wild ride tonight.

203
00:12:07,184 --> 00:12:11,856
The cryptocurrency has gone
from hitting a new record price yesterday

204
00:12:11,939 --> 00:12:13,524
to nose-diving today.

205
00:12:14,150 --> 00:12:15,860
The market started crashing.

206
00:12:16,944 --> 00:12:20,448
Bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies
started to drop down.

207
00:12:20,948 --> 00:12:22,783
Bitcoin took a serious tumble.

208
00:12:22,867 --> 00:12:24,702
[reporter 6] It's now down almost 50%.

209
00:12:24,785 --> 00:12:26,162
[reporter 7] 60%.

210
00:12:26,245 --> 00:12:28,748
By December 2018, by the end of the year,

211
00:12:28,831 --> 00:12:31,667
I think Bitcoin was around $4,000 US.

212
00:12:34,295 --> 00:12:37,465
People who thought they were wealthy
will suddenly become bankrupt overnight.

213
00:12:37,548 --> 00:12:39,049
[reporter 8] In just 24 hours,

214
00:12:39,133 --> 00:12:42,219
more than $60 billion
was wiped off the value

215
00:12:42,303 --> 00:12:44,096
of the entire cryptocurrency market.

216
00:12:45,431 --> 00:12:46,807
[man 10] What's causing this crash?

217
00:12:46,891 --> 00:12:49,435
Usually, it isn't really easy to tell.
There are different factors.

218
00:12:49,518 --> 00:12:52,313
But for once,
this time, it's very clear what it was.

219
00:12:52,396 --> 00:12:55,149
China and South Korea
wants to ban Bitcoin trading.

220
00:12:55,232 --> 00:12:58,944
And that was enough to really drive
down the price of these cryptocurrencies.

221
00:13:03,824 --> 00:13:07,953
[Tong] I had a lot of debt
because I took out $85,000 in loans.

222
00:13:08,037 --> 00:13:10,164
I was down maybe 70, 80% on that.

223
00:13:12,958 --> 00:13:15,252
The interest
was really high on these loans,

224
00:13:15,336 --> 00:13:17,046
and I was paying my mortgage.

225
00:13:17,546 --> 00:13:19,298
It was a very stressful situation.

226
00:13:20,883 --> 00:13:24,428
My relationships with everyone,
everything was souring because of it.

227
00:13:25,012 --> 00:13:28,766
The only thing I could think of
at the time was to sell my apartment

228
00:13:28,849 --> 00:13:30,100
to get out of that debt.

229
00:13:35,314 --> 00:13:37,858
Of course, I had to pay off
the personal loans I took out

230
00:13:37,942 --> 00:13:39,568
and then the mini-mortgage.

231
00:13:40,194 --> 00:13:42,655
After all that, I had about $400,000.

232
00:13:44,865 --> 00:13:47,868
I decided to move this $400,000
back to Canada.

233
00:13:47,952 --> 00:13:51,372
You don't wanna use the bank,
because the bank will take 2% commission.

234
00:13:51,455 --> 00:13:55,417
So 2% commission on $400,000
you can already guess is a lot of money.

235
00:13:58,462 --> 00:14:02,007
I thought maybe I can use crypto to do it.

236
00:14:02,508 --> 00:14:07,888
I noticed that Quadriga had a 10% premium
on there when-- when selling your Bitcoin.

237
00:14:09,306 --> 00:14:13,060
You can actually make some money
transferring to Quadriga.

238
00:14:13,143 --> 00:14:14,478
So that's what I did.

239
00:14:15,521 --> 00:14:17,565
[narrator] You'll never have trouble
moving funds

240
00:14:17,648 --> 00:14:20,776
into and out of your QuadrigaCX account.

241
00:14:23,112 --> 00:14:27,366
[Tong] So I transferred $400,000 worth
of Bitcoin over to Quadriga.

242
00:14:32,621 --> 00:14:34,123
And I immediately sold it.

243
00:14:35,791 --> 00:14:37,668
I immediately tried to transfer it out.

244
00:14:37,751 --> 00:14:41,463
I bought in US dollars, but after selling
in Quadriga, it becomes Canadian dollars.

245
00:14:41,547 --> 00:14:44,800
So I had a $500,000 Canadian withdrawal.

246
00:14:48,804 --> 00:14:51,432
And I remember it taking a long time.

247
00:14:53,642 --> 00:14:55,853
Kept waiting and nothing happened.

248
00:15:00,441 --> 00:15:02,318
I started to get worried a little bit.

249
00:15:02,902 --> 00:15:07,781
This was all my money, my life savings,
everything, in this one exchange,

250
00:15:07,865 --> 00:15:08,824
and

251
00:15:10,034 --> 00:15:11,452
I was praying every day,

252
00:15:12,786 --> 00:15:14,747
hoping I would get my money soon.

253
00:15:26,967 --> 00:15:29,470
[woman 3] I always wanted
to be an investigative reporter,

254
00:15:30,220 --> 00:15:33,140
sort of focused on business specifically.

255
00:15:33,891 --> 00:15:36,560
It definitely feels like
you're a little bit of a detective.

256
00:15:39,855 --> 00:15:45,152
In the fall, 2018,
I started getting tons and tons of emails

257
00:15:45,235 --> 00:15:48,447
from just random Quadriga users saying,

258
00:15:48,530 --> 00:15:52,534
"I can't get my money out,"
which seemed a bit strange.

259
00:15:53,285 --> 00:15:55,329
During the sort of boom,

260
00:15:55,412 --> 00:15:58,207
millions and millions of dollars
from hundreds of users

261
00:15:58,290 --> 00:16:00,292
started flooding in to Quadriga.

262
00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:04,880
According to some data that we got,

263
00:16:04,964 --> 00:16:10,386
$1.2 billion was transacted
through Quadriga that year,

264
00:16:10,469 --> 00:16:14,723
and Quadriga was making money off
of all of these transactions.

265
00:16:15,641 --> 00:16:18,894
I reached out to Quadriga.
I emailed Gerry, and I said,

266
00:16:18,978 --> 00:16:21,772
"Hey, you know, I'm reporting
a story for The Globe and Mail."

267
00:16:22,356 --> 00:16:25,734
"Users are saying
they can't get money out of the exchange."

268
00:16:26,276 --> 00:16:27,861
And "Can you tell me what's going on?"

269
00:16:31,240 --> 00:16:32,408
[computer beeps]

270
00:16:34,493 --> 00:16:38,789
He told me the reason that we can't
process all these withdrawal requests

271
00:16:38,872 --> 00:16:41,667
is that the bank
has literally frozen our money,

272
00:16:41,750 --> 00:16:44,461
because they don't trust
cryptocurrency exchanges.

273
00:16:44,545 --> 00:16:48,549
He said, "We have $26 million
sitting in these bank accounts,

274
00:16:48,632 --> 00:16:51,301
so really it's the bank's fault
people can't get their money out."

275
00:16:51,385 --> 00:16:56,432
It seemed like a plausible enough
explanation, and he was very charming.

276
00:16:56,515 --> 00:17:00,894
He said, "Can you tell me who these people
who are having issues getting money out

277
00:17:00,978 --> 00:17:03,689
because I'd love
to clear it up with them."

278
00:17:03,772 --> 00:17:05,607
He seemed like a very nice guy.

279
00:17:07,943 --> 00:17:11,196
[Tong] I started my withdrawal request
around late October.

280
00:17:13,824 --> 00:17:16,326
I waited. November 2018.

281
00:17:16,910 --> 00:17:17,745
Still nothing.

282
00:17:21,123 --> 00:17:24,043
By the end of December,
I still haven't received anything.

283
00:17:24,626 --> 00:17:27,880
I emailed the support.
They kept saying the same thing.

284
00:17:27,963 --> 00:17:29,965
"Gonna take one more week,
two more weeks."

285
00:17:30,049 --> 00:17:32,217
"We'll get this resolved
and figure it out."

286
00:17:37,806 --> 00:17:40,642
Of course, I was getting
more and more frustrated.

287
00:17:42,311 --> 00:17:44,855
This went on into 2019.

288
00:17:46,815 --> 00:17:49,234
I started to panic.

289
00:17:52,154 --> 00:17:56,116
This was my-- my entire savings built
through, you know, ten years of work

290
00:17:56,700 --> 00:17:58,118
and selling my apartment.

291
00:17:59,244 --> 00:18:00,746
And I just prayed to God.

292
00:18:04,458 --> 00:18:07,377
[Amber] Around that time,
Gerry was traveling a lot,

293
00:18:08,170 --> 00:18:10,339
so I would message him,
and I would get back,

294
00:18:10,422 --> 00:18:13,509
"Hey, I'm in Costa Rica,"
or "I'm in Iceland."

295
00:18:15,177 --> 00:18:16,512
But those were always followed

296
00:18:16,595 --> 00:18:19,932
with a "don't mention
to anyone where I am," um,

297
00:18:20,974 --> 00:18:22,351
which was strange.

298
00:18:22,434 --> 00:18:26,897
Maybe that wasn't just his working
from wherever he wanted to be.

299
00:18:26,980 --> 00:18:30,067
Maybe that was him
avoiding something or someone.

300
00:18:33,654 --> 00:18:37,574
I had no idea what was about to unfold.

301
00:18:39,993 --> 00:18:42,204
[Tong] Kept waiting and nothing happened.

302
00:18:50,838 --> 00:18:53,048
It was like this until January 14th.

303
00:18:53,132 --> 00:18:54,466
I remember the exact date,

304
00:18:54,550 --> 00:18:58,512
because January 14th
is when everything kind of blew up.

305
00:19:02,141 --> 00:19:06,353
[reporter 9] Canada's largest
cryptocurrency exchange is in hot water.

306
00:19:07,729 --> 00:19:12,151
Scott is here to help us unravel
what we know so far.

307
00:19:14,319 --> 00:19:15,195
-Scott.
-Yeah.

308
00:19:15,279 --> 00:19:17,573
This is a real mystery
that's unfolding this morning,

309
00:19:17,656 --> 00:19:19,783
and it all has to do
with the death of the CEO.

310
00:19:21,869 --> 00:19:27,040
Here he is here, Gerald Cotten.
He's the founder of QuadrigaCX.

311
00:19:29,376 --> 00:19:34,631
[reporter 10] The wife of Gerry Cotten,
Jennifer Robertson, said he died suddenly

312
00:19:34,715 --> 00:19:37,676
while in India at the age of just 30.

313
00:19:39,761 --> 00:19:44,016
[Alexandra] I was sort of shocked.
I thought, "What was he doing in India?"

314
00:19:46,435 --> 00:19:47,561
[Tong] Oh, man.

315
00:19:49,021 --> 00:19:50,022
I felt

316
00:19:51,398 --> 00:19:52,566
very nervous.

317
00:19:55,027 --> 00:19:59,156
-And this is an evolving story.
-Well, keep an eye on that for us if you--

318
00:20:03,827 --> 00:20:06,663
[Alex] It just was,
like, a real shocker. Um…

319
00:20:07,497 --> 00:20:11,293
He must have been doing great
with the Bitcoin and his business.

320
00:20:14,004 --> 00:20:16,173
And then just one day he was gone. Um…

321
00:20:17,216 --> 00:20:20,052
Um, just… You always expect you're gonna
see someone again that you know,

322
00:20:20,135 --> 00:20:22,512
and just one day you find out you won't.

323
00:20:24,514 --> 00:20:26,266
[Amber] I was shocked.

324
00:20:27,100 --> 00:20:29,895
And I was-- I was really taken aback.

325
00:20:34,566 --> 00:20:35,525
I was very sad.

326
00:20:36,818 --> 00:20:38,028
And he was so young.

327
00:20:43,242 --> 00:20:45,786
[Alexandra] My editor said,
you know, "Keep an eye on it."

328
00:20:48,205 --> 00:20:50,082
And then shortly after,

329
00:20:51,041 --> 00:20:53,043
the exchange suddenly stopped working.

330
00:20:57,339 --> 00:20:58,298
[computer chimes]

331
00:20:58,924 --> 00:21:01,718
And then Quadriga posted
a notice saying that no one knew

332
00:21:01,802 --> 00:21:03,387
how to access the cryptocurrency.

333
00:21:06,181 --> 00:21:10,519
And that's when I kind of realized
that Gerry was the only guy

334
00:21:10,602 --> 00:21:13,689
who knew all the passwords
into the cryptocurrency.

335
00:21:16,108 --> 00:21:19,236
At that point, the story just goes nuts.

336
00:21:20,070 --> 00:21:22,030
This is an astonishing story.

337
00:21:22,114 --> 00:21:26,034
Gerald Cotten passed away,
and he took the passwords with him.

338
00:21:26,118 --> 00:21:30,330
And that means $190 million
of customers' holdings are locked inside,

339
00:21:30,414 --> 00:21:32,165
and no one can access them.

340
00:21:34,459 --> 00:21:40,132
And I think it was at that point,
I was like, "Oh. Oh, crap." [chuckles]

341
00:21:40,757 --> 00:21:42,926
I felt like I was having a heart attack.

342
00:21:43,010 --> 00:21:45,137
-[heavy breathing]
-[heart beating]

343
00:21:45,220 --> 00:21:47,973
[Tong] It felt like there was
this pressure on my chest.

344
00:21:50,142 --> 00:21:53,395
I-- I wanted, just like everyone else,
to get our money.

345
00:21:54,229 --> 00:21:57,107
It didn't seem real
that this was happening to me. Um…

346
00:21:58,066 --> 00:22:00,569
Right. This-- It can't be, 'cause…

347
00:22:07,034 --> 00:22:09,077
[Andrew] People question every story.

348
00:22:09,161 --> 00:22:10,662
People are suspicious,

349
00:22:11,663 --> 00:22:13,582
especially when money is involved.

350
00:22:13,665 --> 00:22:15,792
Especially when their money is involved.

351
00:22:17,044 --> 00:22:21,631
[Alexandra] Usually if you're running
a cryptocurrency company or an exchange,

352
00:22:21,715 --> 00:22:24,009
you have safeguards in place, right?

353
00:22:24,092 --> 00:22:26,678
So that if you do die
or something happens to you,

354
00:22:26,762 --> 00:22:29,264
someone, you know, knows how to access it.

355
00:22:30,766 --> 00:22:32,976
It's like, it just didn't make sense.

356
00:22:49,284 --> 00:22:51,578
My initial reaction is, "Bullshit."

357
00:22:52,788 --> 00:22:53,955
"This is bullshit."

358
00:22:56,124 --> 00:22:58,210
I'm an AI consultant.

359
00:22:59,544 --> 00:23:03,507
I quit my day job,
was going to start my own company.

360
00:23:04,132 --> 00:23:08,595
I decided to use Quadriga to try
to make money till my company takes off.

361
00:23:09,763 --> 00:23:13,266
I put around $70,000 in there.

362
00:23:14,935 --> 00:23:18,355
And then, um,
Quadriga did not honor the withdrawal.

363
00:23:19,815 --> 00:23:20,816
[phone chimes]

364
00:23:21,775 --> 00:23:24,403
And that's when I saw the statement

365
00:23:24,486 --> 00:23:28,323
from Jennifer Robertson,
wife and partner of Gerald Cotten.

366
00:23:28,907 --> 00:23:31,868
"Gerry died due to complications
of Crohn's disease

367
00:23:32,494 --> 00:23:37,457
on December 9, 2018,
while traveling in India

368
00:23:37,541 --> 00:23:40,836
where he was opening an orphanage
for children in need."

369
00:23:42,504 --> 00:23:46,341
"Sincerely, Jennifer Robertson,
Estate Executor of Gerald Cotten."

370
00:23:49,553 --> 00:23:53,348
The India, the orphanage.
I'm like, "Gimme a break."

371
00:23:55,684 --> 00:23:57,727
Gerry died on December 9th.

372
00:23:58,228 --> 00:24:01,648
The date they announced it, January 14th.

373
00:24:01,731 --> 00:24:03,775
To come out and make a statement

374
00:24:03,859 --> 00:24:07,654
a month after his death…

375
00:24:10,157 --> 00:24:11,199
sounds wrong.

376
00:24:12,159 --> 00:24:14,411
This is not right. Something is off.

377
00:24:17,789 --> 00:24:19,374
Hey, guys. How's it going?

378
00:24:19,458 --> 00:24:23,670
Um, so I just wanna give an update,
um, about my situation right now.

379
00:24:23,753 --> 00:24:28,091
Like, who could have predicted
that a CEO would die mysteriously

380
00:24:28,175 --> 00:24:30,677
under mysterious circumstances in India?

381
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,138
You know, he was the only one that had
the keys to the wallet,

382
00:24:33,221 --> 00:24:34,723
but who can you really believe?

383
00:24:35,307 --> 00:24:39,519
It's-- it's a really depressing
and shocking thing to happen.

384
00:24:40,562 --> 00:24:42,647
The next steps is to, um…

385
00:24:46,610 --> 00:24:47,986
[sighs]

386
00:24:48,069 --> 00:24:49,404
Of course I was angry.

387
00:24:50,030 --> 00:24:51,406
I wanted to find out

388
00:24:51,490 --> 00:24:55,202
if there was an active community
I could chat with about this.

389
00:24:55,285 --> 00:24:56,244
So I looked on Telegram,

390
00:24:56,328 --> 00:24:59,372
because Telegram is actually
what I used for a lot of crypto groups.

391
00:25:03,460 --> 00:25:05,170
Tried to search for Quadriga.

392
00:25:07,464 --> 00:25:10,175
So there was this main
Quadriga Telegram group,

393
00:25:10,258 --> 00:25:13,970
QuadrigaUncovered, that had
a lot of other affected users on it.

394
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:17,807
[computer dings]

395
00:25:21,895 --> 00:25:23,271
[computer chiming]

396
00:25:36,117 --> 00:25:37,494
[computer dings]

397
00:25:38,286 --> 00:25:39,621
[computer chiming]

398
00:25:42,249 --> 00:25:44,209
[Tong]
A lot of people just wanted answers.

399
00:25:44,709 --> 00:25:46,086
What happened to our money?

400
00:25:46,169 --> 00:25:47,879
What happened to Gerry Cotten?

401
00:25:48,838 --> 00:25:52,050
No one was out there to help us.
We were on our own, basically.

402
00:25:52,133 --> 00:25:54,261
It was chaos, right?
It was like a bunch of people.

403
00:25:54,928 --> 00:25:57,389
Some are, like me,
looking for their money.

404
00:25:57,472 --> 00:25:58,765
[computer chimes]

405
00:25:58,848 --> 00:26:00,392
Some just trolling.

406
00:26:00,475 --> 00:26:01,893
[computer chimes]

407
00:26:01,977 --> 00:26:03,019
[computer dings]

408
00:26:05,981 --> 00:26:09,484
[Ali]
But there's also a person named QCXINT.

409
00:26:11,403 --> 00:26:14,489
He sort of brought in
this spirit of investigation.

410
00:26:18,159 --> 00:26:21,246
He's the old, wise man
on top of the hill that we go to.

411
00:26:21,746 --> 00:26:24,291
I'm not sure what I can reveal
about his investigation or not.

412
00:26:24,874 --> 00:26:26,626
'Cause I'm just always, like, worried

413
00:26:26,710 --> 00:26:28,920
that he's gonna yell at me
for saying too much.

414
00:26:33,717 --> 00:26:36,386
[QCXINT] One of the things
that you often have to practice

415
00:26:36,469 --> 00:26:39,055
when you get into crypto is good "op sec."

416
00:26:39,848 --> 00:26:41,808
Short for "operational security."

417
00:26:43,643 --> 00:26:45,854
Crypto is fairly unregulated.

418
00:26:47,188 --> 00:26:49,649
You have to be
extremely, extremely careful

419
00:26:49,733 --> 00:26:52,485
when you're dealing with large sums.

420
00:26:54,404 --> 00:26:58,575
Some individuals, they have
actually been attacked and then tortured

421
00:26:58,658 --> 00:27:01,161
to give up their keys
and things like that.

422
00:27:13,506 --> 00:27:15,091
And that's part of the reason why

423
00:27:16,259 --> 00:27:18,178
I like to remain anonymous.

424
00:27:24,351 --> 00:27:26,561
I'd been trading on Quadriga

425
00:27:26,645 --> 00:27:29,814
in kind of dribs and drabs in 2018,

426
00:27:29,898 --> 00:27:33,777
but unfortunately, over time,
it kind of accumulated to the point

427
00:27:33,860 --> 00:27:37,155
where I probably
had more funds in the exchange

428
00:27:37,238 --> 00:27:39,574
than I was strictly comfortable with.

429
00:27:39,658 --> 00:27:42,994
Um, you know, so, at the end of the day,
when Quadriga went down,

430
00:27:43,078 --> 00:27:44,621
that was a significant sum.

431
00:27:44,704 --> 00:27:47,290
That was, you know,
north of six figures, top sum.

432
00:27:49,042 --> 00:27:52,837
So I guess
being personally involved with this story,

433
00:27:52,921 --> 00:27:57,550
I was highly incentivized
to find out what had happened.

434
00:27:57,634 --> 00:27:58,927
[computer chiming]

435
00:28:07,310 --> 00:28:10,063
[QCXINT] There's this explosion
of interest into the circumstances

436
00:28:10,146 --> 00:28:12,148
of Gerry's death in India.

437
00:28:13,692 --> 00:28:16,611
[Tong] We just started investigating
what might have happened.

438
00:28:18,738 --> 00:28:19,739
[computer dings]

439
00:28:27,038 --> 00:28:29,457
[QCXINT] Everything is turned over.
Everything is looked at.

440
00:28:29,541 --> 00:28:32,210
And we were all looking
at his Instagram account.

441
00:28:33,169 --> 00:28:36,381
Looking at his wife
Jennifer's Instagram account.

442
00:28:36,464 --> 00:28:38,258
Looking at their travel photos.

443
00:28:38,341 --> 00:28:41,219
Looking for any little tidbit
of information.

444
00:28:42,846 --> 00:28:44,973
[computer chiming]

445
00:28:48,810 --> 00:28:51,813
[QCXINT]
So we start looking into Crohn's disease

446
00:28:51,896 --> 00:28:55,900
and whether or not this was actually
something that you could die from.

447
00:28:56,484 --> 00:28:58,236
[Ali] I sort of started Googling it.

448
00:28:59,112 --> 00:29:02,991
From what I gathered,
it's a form of stomach sickness.

449
00:29:03,074 --> 00:29:04,659
You get diarrhea.

450
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,829
Certain food
could trigger it more than other food.

451
00:29:14,127 --> 00:29:15,879
[Tong] People don't die
from Crohn's disease,

452
00:29:15,962 --> 00:29:18,423
-especially at a young age.
-[computer chiming]

453
00:29:28,057 --> 00:29:31,603
[Ali] Then the death certificate
starts circulating around.

454
00:29:32,645 --> 00:29:35,356
[QCXINT]
It was originally sourced by reporters.

455
00:29:36,065 --> 00:29:38,193
And it had misspelled his last name.

456
00:29:39,235 --> 00:29:42,906
C-O-T-T-A-N instead of C-O-T-T-E-N.

457
00:29:42,989 --> 00:29:44,365
[computer chiming]

458
00:29:51,456 --> 00:29:54,292
[QCXINT] What is interesting
is that there is a market

459
00:29:54,375 --> 00:29:56,503
for kind of fake death certificates.

460
00:29:56,586 --> 00:29:57,796
Such things do exist.

461
00:29:57,879 --> 00:29:59,005
[computer chimes]

462
00:30:01,591 --> 00:30:05,178
[QCXINT] And then I spoke to someone
that knew Gerry personally.

463
00:30:06,805 --> 00:30:08,765
He shared some info with me.

464
00:30:09,474 --> 00:30:12,101
He sent me a screenshot
of Gerry's Skype profile,

465
00:30:12,685 --> 00:30:17,023
and it showed that Gerry's
Skype cam was active after his death.

466
00:30:21,486 --> 00:30:22,529
What the fuck?

467
00:30:22,612 --> 00:30:24,489
I guess you could call it red flags.

468
00:30:24,572 --> 00:30:25,907
To me, this looks like

469
00:30:26,783 --> 00:30:28,618
Gerry was still alive.

470
00:30:28,701 --> 00:30:29,953
[computer chiming]

471
00:30:33,665 --> 00:30:35,667
[QCXINT] I think myself,
like a lot of other people,

472
00:30:35,750 --> 00:30:38,253
immediately thought
that this might be an exit scam

473
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,338
and that he hadn't died,

474
00:30:40,421 --> 00:30:43,258
that he had almost definitely
faked his own death

475
00:30:43,341 --> 00:30:45,760
and that he'd actually
run off with the crypto

476
00:30:46,970 --> 00:30:49,639
and was kind of hiding
on an island somewhere.

477
00:30:50,265 --> 00:30:51,516
[computer chimes]

478
00:30:53,977 --> 00:30:55,603
[man 10] I'm not convinced he's dead.

479
00:30:56,104 --> 00:30:58,398
What do you guys think?
Do you think he is dead?

480
00:30:58,481 --> 00:31:03,403
My spider senses, not, no, nope.
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

481
00:31:03,486 --> 00:31:05,572
This guy is not dead.

482
00:31:05,655 --> 00:31:06,906
[computer chimes]

483
00:31:07,740 --> 00:31:08,825
[man 11] He faked it.

484
00:31:10,034 --> 00:31:11,369
[computer chiming]

485
00:31:24,924 --> 00:31:26,467
I started working on this story

486
00:31:26,551 --> 00:31:29,304
with another Globe And Mail reporter
named Joe Castaldo.

487
00:31:30,430 --> 00:31:34,475
If somebody fakes their own death,

488
00:31:34,559 --> 00:31:36,728
that is just an amazing story.

489
00:31:36,811 --> 00:31:39,355
And there's precedent for it too.

490
00:31:39,439 --> 00:31:42,984
Now to the strange case
of hedge fund swindler Samuel Israel.

491
00:31:43,610 --> 00:31:46,154
Last week, it appeared
he might have killed himself

492
00:31:46,237 --> 00:31:48,531
rather than serve
a long stretch in prison.

493
00:31:48,615 --> 00:31:52,035
But tonight, federal authorities
think he staged the whole thing.

494
00:31:52,118 --> 00:31:55,955
This US hedge fund manager,
he left his car on a bridge,

495
00:31:56,039 --> 00:32:00,960
and I think wrote in the dust on his hood
or something like "suicide is painless"

496
00:32:01,044 --> 00:32:02,921
to make it look like he jumped.

497
00:32:03,004 --> 00:32:05,131
But in fact,
he turned himself in a month later.

498
00:32:05,924 --> 00:32:09,052
I was thinking of that story
when this happened with Gerry.

499
00:32:09,135 --> 00:32:12,388
Well, it's happened before.
It could happen again.

500
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,726
[QCXINT] It seemed like something
out of a movie script,

501
00:32:17,518 --> 00:32:19,312
but you know, you have to ask yourself,

502
00:32:20,146 --> 00:32:22,899
"Is Gerry capable
of pulling off an exit scam?"

503
00:32:23,524 --> 00:32:27,195
I guess when I think of somebody
who's a criminal mastermind,

504
00:32:27,278 --> 00:32:29,822
who's devious, calculating, cunning…

505
00:32:33,368 --> 00:32:38,456
what we don't think of
is a slightly geeky 24-year-old.

506
00:32:41,668 --> 00:32:44,379
[Gerry chuckles]

507
00:32:44,462 --> 00:32:47,715
[Gerry] Charizard has chosen
to use Bursting Inferno.

508
00:32:47,799 --> 00:32:49,384
[QCXINT] Burning Pokemon cards.

509
00:32:49,467 --> 00:32:50,426
[Gerry] Go!

510
00:32:52,261 --> 00:32:54,722
[QCXINT]
And, um, melting money in a microwave.

511
00:32:56,307 --> 00:32:58,393
[Gerry] We'll put it in there for a minute.

512
00:32:59,477 --> 00:33:01,104
It looks like it's melting.

513
00:33:01,854 --> 00:33:03,690
[QCXINT] Looking at some of this material,

514
00:33:03,773 --> 00:33:06,234
you don't think,
"Well, this is a criminal mastermind."

515
00:33:10,446 --> 00:33:11,864
He would've needed help.

516
00:33:18,162 --> 00:33:22,875
Husbands and wives tend
to tell each other nearly everything.

517
00:33:24,335 --> 00:33:27,046
Oh, can I talk about Jen now? [laughs]

518
00:33:30,758 --> 00:33:33,886
His wife, Jennifer Robertson,
was the only other person with him

519
00:33:33,970 --> 00:33:35,513
when he supposedly died.

520
00:33:38,641 --> 00:33:43,479
[QCXINT] Being the person seemingly
in control of the exchange at that point…

521
00:33:44,272 --> 00:33:46,774
[Ali] Naturally, the group
starts looking into her.

522
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:50,361
Who is she? Is she even real, right?

523
00:33:51,863 --> 00:33:55,658
[Joe] People who knew him didn't
even really know about Jennifer,

524
00:33:55,742 --> 00:33:57,160
that they were together.

525
00:33:57,744 --> 00:34:00,038
And I found that just a little strange.

526
00:34:00,872 --> 00:34:04,417
I did not know he had a wife,
um, or how long they were together.

527
00:34:04,500 --> 00:34:07,670
I'm not sure if he was, uh, dating her
back when he was in Vancouver

528
00:34:07,754 --> 00:34:09,422
or if he had met her after the fact.

529
00:34:18,806 --> 00:34:21,309
Okay, where am I supposed to sit?

530
00:34:23,061 --> 00:34:24,812
I don't-- I can't have those.

531
00:34:26,898 --> 00:34:29,942
[interviewer] If someone had said to you,
"Gerry's a criminal mastermind."

532
00:34:30,026 --> 00:34:33,154
"This is the kind of guy he is."
What would you say to them?

533
00:34:33,237 --> 00:34:34,989
I would have told them to fuck off.

534
00:34:35,490 --> 00:34:37,492
Drop dead. Just get away from me.

535
00:34:37,575 --> 00:34:39,619
Like, I just can't… I can't…

536
00:34:40,203 --> 00:34:41,287
It enrages me.

537
00:34:44,123 --> 00:34:47,043
I really just want
to be an advocate for my sister,

538
00:34:47,126 --> 00:34:52,006
because none of us have said anything.
Her lawyers kept saying not to.

539
00:34:52,548 --> 00:34:56,344
Jenny had nobody,
and I just have a lot that I wanna say.

540
00:34:57,595 --> 00:35:00,681
She's beautiful. She's funny.

541
00:35:00,765 --> 00:35:02,225
She's always happy.

542
00:35:02,809 --> 00:35:04,143
Um, well, was.

543
00:35:07,313 --> 00:35:12,860
The last time that I saw Gerry,
he was calm, cool, collected.

544
00:35:12,944 --> 00:35:16,739
Uh, I would say I've got
great intuition about people's moods.

545
00:35:18,491 --> 00:35:19,534
He loved Jenny.

546
00:35:19,617 --> 00:35:24,122
He wasn't trying to be
the guy on a beach faking his death.

547
00:35:25,665 --> 00:35:26,874
Doesn't make sense.

548
00:35:28,709 --> 00:35:30,294
She met Gerry on Tinder,

549
00:35:30,378 --> 00:35:34,757
and he happened to be the very
first person that she swiped right on.

550
00:35:35,675 --> 00:35:38,761
That was,
you know, just before Christmas, 2014.

551
00:35:41,139 --> 00:35:44,600
At first,
she didn't think that he was her type.

552
00:35:44,684 --> 00:35:48,479
He was kind of introverted,
and, uh, we're kind of loud.

553
00:35:50,273 --> 00:35:52,859
But my whole family truly loved Gerry.

554
00:35:52,942 --> 00:35:54,861
You know,
once he got used to us, he was funny

555
00:35:54,944 --> 00:35:58,322
and-- and he made jokes and he was lively.

556
00:36:00,366 --> 00:36:02,577
She was over the moon.

557
00:36:03,286 --> 00:36:08,332
He seemed to be so romantic
and very thoughtful.

558
00:36:08,958 --> 00:36:12,170
But he really
was kind of the Prince Charming.

559
00:36:13,379 --> 00:36:15,214
They were meant to be together.

560
00:36:15,756 --> 00:36:19,051
They truly were, you know, soul mates.

561
00:36:20,553 --> 00:36:23,139
All of it just kind of clicked for them.

562
00:36:23,973 --> 00:36:27,059
It was just really
the way he looked at her all the time.

563
00:36:28,436 --> 00:36:31,772
He loved her. You could feel it.

564
00:36:32,273 --> 00:36:36,444
And one of the things
that he had said to her was

565
00:36:36,527 --> 00:36:39,739
that she had taught him how to love,

566
00:36:40,323 --> 00:36:45,453
that he didn't even know
that those feelings were possible.

567
00:36:48,664 --> 00:36:50,249
I'd never heard of Reddit.

568
00:36:53,836 --> 00:36:56,964
But I'd heard about it from Jenny,

569
00:36:57,048 --> 00:36:59,133
'cause, of course,
it was really upsetting her.

570
00:37:02,386 --> 00:37:04,889
Jenny would read everything.

571
00:37:06,224 --> 00:37:09,227
'Cause, in her grief,
she was trying to hold on to Gerry,

572
00:37:09,310 --> 00:37:11,270
she read anything
and everything about him.

573
00:37:11,354 --> 00:37:13,231
At first, there was a lot of nice stuff,

574
00:37:13,314 --> 00:37:16,108
but then it became a little dark.

575
00:37:17,485 --> 00:37:19,278
And getting darker and darker.

576
00:37:20,863 --> 00:37:21,822
[computer chimes]

577
00:37:22,490 --> 00:37:25,618
[Tong] There was a Reddit post
that caught everyone's attention.

578
00:37:26,994 --> 00:37:32,124
[QCXINT] It's purportedly
from a contractor called QCXContractor.

579
00:37:33,417 --> 00:37:36,045
And he's doing an AMA on Reddit.

580
00:37:36,128 --> 00:37:39,423
Now, an AMA is short for
"ask me anything."

581
00:37:40,216 --> 00:37:45,680
So, for the first time,
we've actually got someone inside Quadriga

582
00:37:45,763 --> 00:37:49,016
and is doing a little bit
of an anonymous leak.

583
00:37:58,484 --> 00:38:02,697
You know, one of the things they said
was that they were at the funeral.

584
00:38:11,789 --> 00:38:13,916
[Ali] I started asking
questions about the funeral.

585
00:38:14,500 --> 00:38:17,628
Whether the casket was open or not.

586
00:38:19,005 --> 00:38:20,298
[computer dings]

587
00:38:27,096 --> 00:38:30,683
Again, um, not sure whether there was
an actual dead body in there or not.

588
00:38:30,766 --> 00:38:32,810
No, I did not see the body.

589
00:38:34,270 --> 00:38:35,521
[interviewer] Um…

590
00:38:35,604 --> 00:38:37,398
-Did Jen see the body?
-Yes.

591
00:38:47,283 --> 00:38:48,492
[computer dings]

592
00:38:53,331 --> 00:38:57,251
[Ali] The contractor
said she was "fake grieving."

593
00:38:58,336 --> 00:38:59,420
[computer dings]

594
00:39:02,590 --> 00:39:06,802
Very, very strange behavior for a widow
who just lost her husband.

595
00:39:06,886 --> 00:39:08,137
[computer dinging]

596
00:39:15,853 --> 00:39:18,189
[Alex] It didn't seem like
she had much to be happy for then.

597
00:39:18,689 --> 00:39:21,192
But she's dancing
at her husband's funeral.

598
00:39:22,151 --> 00:39:24,362
Seems weird. Seems like something's up.

599
00:39:27,365 --> 00:39:29,950
[Ali]
It just didn't look like he really died.

600
00:39:32,828 --> 00:39:36,874
[QCXINT] I reached out
to this QCXContractor on Telegram.

601
00:39:36,957 --> 00:39:37,792
[computer chimes]

602
00:39:37,875 --> 00:39:41,379
Then I was able to confirm that
they were in fact a Quadriga employee.

603
00:39:41,962 --> 00:39:45,800
What he told me was that there'd
been some kind of confrontation

604
00:39:45,883 --> 00:39:48,511
between Jennifer and Gerry's parents.

605
00:39:50,096 --> 00:39:52,181
It was difficult to have them there.

606
00:39:53,391 --> 00:39:56,394
We're East Coast.
Got a lot of Celtic heritage.

607
00:39:56,477 --> 00:39:57,853
We had an Irish wake.

608
00:39:58,938 --> 00:40:02,650
There was a lot of food.
There was a lot of alcohol,

609
00:40:02,733 --> 00:40:06,612
and, unfortunately,
Gerry's parents didn't like that.

610
00:40:07,988 --> 00:40:12,618
[QCXINT] It basically led to them being
thrown out of the house after the funeral,

611
00:40:12,701 --> 00:40:16,622
where I believe Gerry's parents
were meant to be staying the night.

612
00:40:18,165 --> 00:40:20,751
Something major has gone down,

613
00:40:20,835 --> 00:40:22,962
to the point
where she's told them to get out

614
00:40:23,045 --> 00:40:24,964
and that she doesn't need them anymore.

615
00:40:26,215 --> 00:40:27,550
[computer chiming]

616
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:43,774
[Alexandra] There was
all of this speculation around

617
00:40:43,858 --> 00:40:45,484
whether she was, like, in on it.

618
00:40:46,777 --> 00:40:51,532
We wanted to see what we could learn
about her involvement in Quadriga.

619
00:40:53,617 --> 00:40:55,619
The story that Gerry was the only one

620
00:40:55,703 --> 00:41:00,666
who knew how to access
Quadriga's crypto funds came from Jen.

621
00:41:04,211 --> 00:41:05,796
Following Gerry's death,

622
00:41:07,798 --> 00:41:14,180
she scoured their apartment looking
for passwords to get into his laptop.

623
00:41:15,014 --> 00:41:17,016
She couldn't find it anywhere.

624
00:41:18,684 --> 00:41:21,103
[thunder rumbles]

625
00:41:21,187 --> 00:41:22,605
After Gerry's death,

626
00:41:23,856 --> 00:41:26,317
Quadriga filed for creditor protection.

627
00:41:27,860 --> 00:41:29,778
Creditor protection
is granted to companies

628
00:41:29,862 --> 00:41:32,072
when they run into financial trouble.

629
00:41:33,365 --> 00:41:37,661
Included in the court filings
was an affidavit from Jennifer Robertson.

630
00:41:38,245 --> 00:41:42,416
Jennifer goes on to basically say
she didn't really know anything

631
00:41:42,500 --> 00:41:44,960
about how the company operated

632
00:41:45,753 --> 00:41:49,965
and that Gerry had been running
this company entirely on his own.

633
00:41:51,884 --> 00:41:53,469
[Tong] I was a little bit in disbelief.

634
00:41:53,552 --> 00:41:55,429
I mean,
during all of their travels together,

635
00:41:55,513 --> 00:42:01,018
he never once told her anything
about how Quadriga was operated?

636
00:42:01,101 --> 00:42:03,687
Like, that didn't make sense to me.

637
00:42:06,398 --> 00:42:09,026
[Alexandra] Then we discovered
these Quadriga users

638
00:42:09,610 --> 00:42:10,694
who had bank transfers

639
00:42:10,778 --> 00:42:14,156
that had come to them through
this property management company

640
00:42:14,240 --> 00:42:15,449
that she was running.

641
00:42:19,662 --> 00:42:22,498
This would directly contradict
Jennifer's statement

642
00:42:22,581 --> 00:42:26,544
on her affidavit saying that she wasn't
involved with QuadrigaCX in any way.

643
00:42:29,922 --> 00:42:32,841
If she lied in her affidavit,
she could've lied about any other things.

644
00:42:34,593 --> 00:42:38,931
[Joe] I saw that, and I was wondering,
"Well, what's going on here?"

645
00:42:39,014 --> 00:42:44,103
I asked her lawyer about it,
who just didn't comment.

646
00:42:44,186 --> 00:42:50,276
And, uh, I don't think we ever got
an official answer to that question.

647
00:42:50,359 --> 00:42:52,194
I'm sure that the lawyer said,

648
00:42:52,278 --> 00:42:54,530
"We don't need
to say anything about that."

649
00:42:55,030 --> 00:42:56,031
I don't know.

650
00:42:56,907 --> 00:42:59,660
Right? So were some things omitted?

651
00:42:59,743 --> 00:43:01,579
Yeah. On purpose? I don't know.

652
00:43:02,246 --> 00:43:05,666
Oversight? Could been.
My sister's not a liar.

653
00:43:06,250 --> 00:43:10,337
I-- I started to believe that
Jennifer Robertson was kind of in on this.

654
00:43:15,593 --> 00:43:17,553
Are they just playing the long game?

655
00:43:17,636 --> 00:43:20,556
She's playing the part
of the gullible wife.

656
00:43:21,056 --> 00:43:23,434
She knows that there's gonna
be heat for the next three years,

657
00:43:23,517 --> 00:43:25,686
and then, at some point,
she's gonna nick off

658
00:43:25,769 --> 00:43:28,564
and, you know, meet him in an island
in the Caribbean somewhere.

659
00:43:30,357 --> 00:43:34,778
We've got a lot
of what's kind of circumstantial evidence

660
00:43:34,862 --> 00:43:36,864
that this could be an exit scam.

661
00:43:38,073 --> 00:43:41,577
Problem is we kind of don't have a way

662
00:43:41,660 --> 00:43:44,747
to indisputably prove that just yet.

663
00:43:46,915 --> 00:43:48,250
[computer chiming]

664
00:44:20,532 --> 00:44:24,495
[woman 4] So the news first broke
in February of 2019.

665
00:44:24,995 --> 00:44:26,664
And I was like, "I'm sorry. What?"

666
00:44:26,747 --> 00:44:31,335
Like, the founder died and then he was
the only one that had access to the keys?

667
00:44:31,418 --> 00:44:32,294
Like, what?

668
00:44:32,378 --> 00:44:35,881
I immediately was questioning
everything about the story.

669
00:44:37,633 --> 00:44:41,136
I'd suspected
that the money might be moving,

670
00:44:41,220 --> 00:44:45,432
which would make their entire
sort of point moot, right?

671
00:44:45,516 --> 00:44:48,894
'Cause their whole claim was that he died
and he was the only one with the keys.

672
00:44:48,977 --> 00:44:53,315
Um, but if money had moved
after his death, then that would be a lie.

673
00:44:54,900 --> 00:44:59,196
The whole purpose of Bitcoin is,
like, everything's verifiable by everyone.

674
00:45:00,614 --> 00:45:04,952
Bitcoin is backed by underlying technology
called the blockchain.

675
00:45:09,248 --> 00:45:13,252
There are websites that have
sort of visualizations of the blockchain.

676
00:45:16,714 --> 00:45:20,718
But the simplest way to think about it is
like a digital ledger.

677
00:45:20,801 --> 00:45:21,844
Like a spreadsheet.

678
00:45:23,679 --> 00:45:26,890
Every single computer
is able to see the transactions

679
00:45:26,974 --> 00:45:29,393
to verify that the transactions are valid

680
00:45:29,476 --> 00:45:32,604
and then to verify, like,
the whole history of transactions.

681
00:45:34,398 --> 00:45:37,276
And you can just
follow the money wherever it goes.

682
00:45:48,662 --> 00:45:54,001
What an exchange will do
is have 5% or 10% of all of the money

683
00:45:54,084 --> 00:45:58,464
that they're holding in a hot wallet,
and the rest is cold.

684
00:45:58,547 --> 00:46:02,342
And a cold wallet is an offline wallet.

685
00:46:02,426 --> 00:46:06,096
The hot wallet is like your checkbook
or your debit card.

686
00:46:06,180 --> 00:46:08,515
And the cold wallet is, like, the vault.

687
00:46:09,850 --> 00:46:15,105
I knew a couple of Quadriga's
cold wallet addresses on the blockchain.

688
00:46:15,773 --> 00:46:17,107
And so I started there.

689
00:46:21,820 --> 00:46:27,117
I spent the next couple of weeks
parsing a huge number of transactions.

690
00:46:30,078 --> 00:46:34,541
I was expecting either see a balance
of, like, $100 million or something,

691
00:46:35,459 --> 00:46:40,714
or to very quickly see a transfer
of 10 million, 100 million.

692
00:46:40,798 --> 00:46:42,758
Some big sum of money.

693
00:46:42,841 --> 00:46:44,843
[suspenseful music playing]

694
00:46:54,144 --> 00:46:55,979
[Taylor] However,
with the Quadriga addresses,

695
00:46:56,563 --> 00:46:58,899
I didn't ever find this pile of money.

696
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,445
If you don't see the money leave
or go anywhere,

697
00:47:03,529 --> 00:47:06,198
the question is just like,
"Well, where did the money go?"

698
00:47:09,284 --> 00:47:10,202
The money's just…

699
00:47:13,413 --> 00:47:14,623
I don't know.

700
00:47:16,500 --> 00:47:17,751
[computer chimes]

701
00:47:21,547 --> 00:47:25,175
Once I determined that there
was no money in the cold storage,

702
00:47:26,093 --> 00:47:28,679
that's when I stopped believing
that he was dead.

703
00:47:28,762 --> 00:47:30,764
[computer chiming]

704
00:47:47,573 --> 00:47:51,535
[QCXINT] Finding out that this whole story

705
00:47:51,618 --> 00:47:54,580
about the keys to the cold wallet

706
00:47:54,663 --> 00:47:58,625
being essentially a bit
of a wild goose chase is sickening.

707
00:48:00,919 --> 00:48:05,299
[Kimberly] We were scared
that Jenny would be implicated in it.

708
00:48:06,758 --> 00:48:08,385
Because of the amount of money,

709
00:48:08,468 --> 00:48:13,181
my brother and I were starting to worry
that she might have to go to jail.

710
00:48:14,766 --> 00:48:17,895
Right?
Like, we aren't people that go to jail.

711
00:48:17,978 --> 00:48:20,647
We're not criminals.
You know, we kind of know somebody

712
00:48:20,731 --> 00:48:24,151
who knows somebody who might
have did something kind of sort of bad,

713
00:48:24,234 --> 00:48:27,070
but that was the-- the worry.

714
00:48:29,197 --> 00:48:30,866
We were afraid for her.

715
00:48:36,330 --> 00:48:39,291
[QCXINT] It's certainly starting
to look like fraud or embezzlement.

716
00:48:39,374 --> 00:48:41,376
[computer chiming]

717
00:48:54,014 --> 00:48:58,518
But, you know, the-- the hopes
of finding a five-foot something,

718
00:48:58,602 --> 00:49:03,565
slightly ginger-toned Caucasian Gerry
seemed to be very slim.

719
00:49:10,948 --> 00:49:14,242
We-- we knew he was mischievous.
We knew that.

720
00:49:15,077 --> 00:49:19,331
This video confirms
that a walnut can indeed be lit on fire.

721
00:49:19,414 --> 00:49:20,791
[laughing]

722
00:49:23,502 --> 00:49:26,922
[Andrew] I bet you he's good
at laying low, at being quiet.

723
00:49:27,005 --> 00:49:29,466
I think these are all things
Gerry is good at.

724
00:49:29,549 --> 00:49:31,218
[Alex] He could be a citizen
of 20 countries

725
00:49:31,301 --> 00:49:33,595
under 20 different faces
and 20 different names.

726
00:49:34,721 --> 00:49:37,516
[Alexandra] And then this sort of rumor
started circulating online

727
00:49:37,599 --> 00:49:40,477
that the money had been moved to Bermuda.

728
00:49:41,311 --> 00:49:44,982
And that there was this plastic surgeon
there who had operated on Gerry

729
00:49:45,065 --> 00:49:48,235
to change his face
so that he could continue to live

730
00:49:48,318 --> 00:49:49,861
without being recognizable.

731
00:49:51,697 --> 00:49:57,494
I called the RCMP,
which is equivalent of FBI for Canada.

732
00:49:57,577 --> 00:49:59,871
[phone ringing]

733
00:49:59,955 --> 00:50:04,292
[Ali] And I said, "Look, there's this guy
who I think is alive,

734
00:50:04,376 --> 00:50:06,962
leaving the country
with millions of dollars of our money,

735
00:50:07,462 --> 00:50:10,215
and I need you guys
to sort of investigate,"

736
00:50:10,298 --> 00:50:13,427
and she said, "Well, if they leave,
they leave. That's fine."

737
00:50:13,510 --> 00:50:15,429
"We can try to catch 'em later."

738
00:50:17,055 --> 00:50:21,226
Right? Casually.
Right? It was borderline insulting.

739
00:50:24,354 --> 00:50:25,731
[computer chiming]

740
00:50:50,505 --> 00:50:51,339
Okay.

741
00:50:54,051 --> 00:50:57,304
The Ontario Securities Commission,
also known as the OSC,

742
00:50:57,387 --> 00:51:00,724
is responsible
for regulating financial markets

743
00:51:00,807 --> 00:51:03,018
in the Canadian province of Ontario.

744
00:51:07,230 --> 00:51:10,525
Our mandate was
to find out where the money went.

745
00:51:11,693 --> 00:51:15,363
And therefore the enforcement branch
of the OSC decided

746
00:51:15,447 --> 00:51:16,865
to open an investigation.

747
00:51:19,785 --> 00:51:22,079
In the first two years of operations,

748
00:51:22,162 --> 00:51:25,624
Quadriga had accountants,
lawyers on staff,

749
00:51:25,707 --> 00:51:28,919
and therefore there are some
records for that time period.

750
00:51:29,503 --> 00:51:34,633
However, after 2016,
there's a general absence of records

751
00:51:34,716 --> 00:51:37,552
that you would normally expect
to see in a business.

752
00:51:38,053 --> 00:51:42,682
If you do not have access to records,
it simply complicates your work.

753
00:51:42,766 --> 00:51:47,938
However, working as a forensic accountant,
I expect my work to be complicated.

754
00:51:50,524 --> 00:51:54,653
We came across something
that caused us great concern.

755
00:51:55,570 --> 00:51:57,405
Throughout the life of Quadriga,

756
00:51:57,489 --> 00:52:02,035
large volumes
of crypto assets were being sent

757
00:52:02,119 --> 00:52:06,832
to other crypto asset exchanges
located abroad.

758
00:52:09,334 --> 00:52:11,795
[Taylor] What the fuck is going on?

759
00:52:12,629 --> 00:52:15,715
That's not normal, uh, at all.

760
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:22,013
Why would an exchange
be sending directly to another exchange?

761
00:52:22,681 --> 00:52:25,600
The answer's not usually a good one.

762
00:52:25,684 --> 00:52:27,936
They had to be, like,
trying to hide something.

763
00:52:28,436 --> 00:52:30,438
Maybe, like, trying to launder money?

764
00:52:30,939 --> 00:52:32,899
[police radio chatter]

765
00:52:33,483 --> 00:52:35,110
[QCXINT] In the world of money laundering,

766
00:52:35,193 --> 00:52:38,446
there can be
some quite bad people involved.

767
00:52:41,032 --> 00:52:44,452
Organized crime,
Russian mobsters, you know, you name it.

768
00:52:44,536 --> 00:52:45,370
So,

769
00:52:46,204 --> 00:52:49,416
did Gerry find himself
in something that was too deep?

770
00:52:52,294 --> 00:52:55,213
Like, if you're laundering money
for the mob, you're scared of the mob.

771
00:52:55,297 --> 00:52:57,174
You're not scared of the cops.

772
00:53:05,390 --> 00:53:07,601
[QCXINT] If we were
to uncover where the money had gone,

773
00:53:07,684 --> 00:53:10,061
we would have to dig very deep

774
00:53:10,145 --> 00:53:12,814
and look into every aspect
of the exchange.

775
00:53:14,816 --> 00:53:20,155
Certainly, the conventional narrative was
that Gerry was the founder of Quadriga

776
00:53:20,238 --> 00:53:23,116
and the CEO and that he was in control.

777
00:53:27,579 --> 00:53:30,332
Um, but one
of the interesting things I found

778
00:53:30,415 --> 00:53:33,210
was the original QuadrigaCX domain name…

779
00:53:36,630 --> 00:53:39,090
had actually been registered not by Gerry.

780
00:53:39,174 --> 00:53:41,218
Uh, it'd been registered by someone else.

781
00:53:41,301 --> 00:53:44,012
This individual known as Michael Patryn.

782
00:53:50,685 --> 00:53:56,274
He definitely was an important individual
in the founding origins of Quadriga.

783
00:53:57,317 --> 00:54:00,362
So I started to dig around
and look into him a little bit more.

784
00:54:02,489 --> 00:54:05,033
[reporter 11] Meanwhile,
law enforcement officials in both Canada,

785
00:54:05,116 --> 00:54:09,037
where QuadrigaCX is located,
and in the United States,

786
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:11,873
are investigating potential wrongdoing…

787
00:54:12,707 --> 00:54:15,460
[interviewer] Are you comfortable
talking about him, Andrew?

788
00:54:15,543 --> 00:54:17,295
What would you like to know?

789
00:54:21,925 --> 00:54:24,636
When we first met Mike and Gerry,

790
00:54:25,220 --> 00:54:30,308
it was Mike that presented himself
as the founder of QuadrigaCX.

791
00:54:30,392 --> 00:54:33,270
And Gerry kind of tagged along.

792
00:54:33,353 --> 00:54:38,775
[man 12] Our guest tonight is
Michael Patryn from, uh, Quadriga.

793
00:54:38,858 --> 00:54:40,819
Why don't you tell us
a bit about yourself?

794
00:54:40,902 --> 00:54:45,115
Sure. I've been working
with digital currency since about 2003.

795
00:54:45,198 --> 00:54:48,618
I've operated numerous exchanges,
emerging platforms, casinos,

796
00:54:48,702 --> 00:54:50,036
provided advisory services

797
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,956
with respect to growth and development
of other such companies.

798
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,502
It did always seem
as though Mike was in charge.

799
00:54:57,585 --> 00:55:01,172
Mike was muscular and an amateur UFC guy.

800
00:55:04,843 --> 00:55:07,762
First time I met Gerry was
in Mike's fancy car.

801
00:55:07,846 --> 00:55:09,723
And Mike was doing all the talking.

802
00:55:09,806 --> 00:55:12,309
Gerry would laugh at his jokes
when they weren't funny.

803
00:55:12,392 --> 00:55:13,727
That's-- That's key.

804
00:55:14,394 --> 00:55:19,065
And that was kind of
what really immediately made me see them

805
00:55:19,149 --> 00:55:21,818
in a power imbalance
in their relationship.

806
00:55:22,736 --> 00:55:27,657
There were definitely a lot of rumors
about Mike going around.

807
00:55:28,908 --> 00:55:32,245
I think that Gerry,
he should be afraid of Mike.

808
00:55:32,329 --> 00:55:33,955
[chuckles] I would be.

809
00:55:36,333 --> 00:55:39,836
[Joe] People who knew Patryn
were reluctant to talk about him.

810
00:55:39,919 --> 00:55:41,546
They were afraid of him.

811
00:55:46,217 --> 00:55:49,471
[Alexandra] There were all these posts
on the Internet, mostly on Reddit,

812
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:54,768
connecting him with
this other guy named Omar Dhanani.

813
00:55:56,269 --> 00:55:58,480
So these posts were essentially alleging

814
00:55:58,563 --> 00:56:01,566
that Michael Patryn
was hiding this criminal past,

815
00:56:01,649 --> 00:56:05,362
that he had once lived
in California under the name Omar Dhanani

816
00:56:06,071 --> 00:56:09,324
and that he had been involved
in a money laundering service

817
00:56:09,407 --> 00:56:13,703
for an identity theft ring
called Shadowcrew,

818
00:56:14,662 --> 00:56:17,957
an online marketplace
for trafficking in stolen identities

819
00:56:18,041 --> 00:56:20,126
and stolen credit card information.

820
00:56:23,046 --> 00:56:25,173
[QCXINT] This is a bit of a bombshell,

821
00:56:26,049 --> 00:56:29,844
but, you know, a few forum posts
don't necessarily prove a point.

822
00:56:30,678 --> 00:56:32,180
[Alexandra] We needed proof.

823
00:56:33,223 --> 00:56:38,269
[Joe] We figure, "Okay, we can get
the mug shots for Omar Dhanani

824
00:56:38,353 --> 00:56:40,188
and see if it's the same person."

825
00:56:40,688 --> 00:56:45,026
About a week later,
they arrived in my email.

826
00:56:46,694 --> 00:56:50,407
I remember sitting with Alex
and an editor in The Globe office,

827
00:56:52,242 --> 00:56:56,079
and the editor is studying
these photos of Dhanani…

828
00:56:59,082 --> 00:56:59,958
and Patryn.

829
00:57:02,502 --> 00:57:04,295
It's going, like, back and forth closely.

830
00:57:08,716 --> 00:57:10,510
And he notices a pockmark

831
00:57:11,636 --> 00:57:13,054
on Dhanani's forehead…

832
00:57:14,931 --> 00:57:18,476
and how Michael Patryn has
a pockmark in the exact same spot.

833
00:57:20,353 --> 00:57:23,106
Michael Patryn is definitely Omar Dhanani.

834
00:57:38,580 --> 00:57:43,209
[Ali] If I would've known that, I would've
never, ever put my money in Quadriga.

835
00:57:44,502 --> 00:57:46,463
[Tong] This is crazy.

836
00:57:47,255 --> 00:57:49,757
I just thought, "Well, this is
another thread in the rabbit hole."

837
00:57:49,841 --> 00:57:51,217
"How deep can it go?"

838
00:57:52,719 --> 00:57:56,890
[QCXINT] When you find one
of the founders has this criminal past,

839
00:57:57,765 --> 00:58:00,101
that person becomes suspect number one.

840
00:58:04,314 --> 00:58:07,942
[Daniel] In February 2019,
when Quadriga ceased operating,

841
00:58:09,319 --> 00:58:14,199
it owed its users cash
and cryptocurrencies

842
00:58:14,282 --> 00:58:18,244
at a combined value of $215 million.

843
00:58:18,328 --> 00:58:21,581
However, we were only able to identify

844
00:58:21,664 --> 00:58:25,168
approximately $46 million worth of assets,

845
00:58:25,251 --> 00:58:31,508
leaving an unexplained shortfall
of approximately $169 million.

846
00:58:31,591 --> 00:58:33,009
And that didn't make sense…

847
00:58:33,092 --> 00:58:35,220
It is the hottest currency in the world.

848
00:58:35,887 --> 00:58:39,224
[Daniel] …because in 2017,
when the market was booming,

849
00:58:39,933 --> 00:58:44,270
more and more individuals,
more users, were onboarding the platform

850
00:58:44,354 --> 00:58:48,274
and bringing in more cryptocurrencies
and also more cash.

851
00:58:51,486 --> 00:58:55,323
We were concerned
that crypto assets were being stolen.

852
00:58:55,406 --> 00:58:58,952
We knew
that there was a co-founder to Quadriga.

853
00:58:59,035 --> 00:59:00,912
His name was Michael Patryn.

854
00:59:00,995 --> 00:59:04,916
And therefore,
we were interested in talking to him.

855
00:59:05,500 --> 00:59:09,254
We were unable
to make contact with Mr. Patryn.

856
00:59:12,966 --> 00:59:17,428
A lot of people thought that Mike Patryn
actually took some of their money

857
00:59:17,512 --> 00:59:20,181
and ran off with it,
or maybe he was in cahoots with Gerry.

858
00:59:20,265 --> 00:59:22,225
Maybe they conspired together.

859
00:59:22,308 --> 00:59:24,310
[computer chiming]

860
00:59:40,285 --> 00:59:42,954
[Ali] As the story sort of
was lacking entertainment,

861
00:59:43,037 --> 00:59:45,164
Michael Patryn joins the Telegram group.

862
00:59:45,248 --> 00:59:47,250
[computer chiming]

863
00:59:54,048 --> 00:59:57,552
[QCXINT] Creditors are pretty angry,
and they're looking for answers.

864
00:59:57,635 --> 00:59:59,637
[computer chiming]

865
01:00:05,935 --> 01:00:07,729
[Joe] So we emailed Patryn.

866
01:00:07,812 --> 01:00:11,399
[Alexandra] And he told us that he had not
had any level of involvement in Quadriga

867
01:00:11,482 --> 01:00:13,401
since he split with the company.

868
01:00:13,985 --> 01:00:17,572
He told us he left the company in 2016.

869
01:00:18,281 --> 01:00:22,076
I don't know if we fully believed Patryn.

870
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:23,411
[computer chiming]

871
01:00:31,836 --> 01:00:34,672
[QCXINT] Patryn seems like
a fairly seasoned character.

872
01:00:35,465 --> 01:00:41,220
He was deft in deflecting a lot
of the criticism that was aimed at him,

873
01:00:41,304 --> 01:00:45,475
maintaining that he was
a legitimate businessman,

874
01:00:45,558 --> 01:00:49,437
but whether or not, you know, he's
entirely innocent is another question.

875
01:00:50,063 --> 01:00:51,314
[computer chiming]

876
01:00:59,906 --> 01:01:03,284
I'm like, "Wow, he thinks Gerry's alive."

877
01:01:04,661 --> 01:01:06,204
[computer chiming]

878
01:01:26,182 --> 01:01:29,394
[Joe] Outwardly, Gerry and Patryn
seemed very different.

879
01:01:29,477 --> 01:01:31,104
[whirring]

880
01:01:32,772 --> 01:01:36,442
Gerry was this smiley, kind of nerdy guy.

881
01:01:38,277 --> 01:01:41,155
Whereas, you know,
you look at Patryn online,

882
01:01:41,239 --> 01:01:44,325
and he's fashioning himself
as a-- as a macho badass

883
01:01:44,409 --> 01:01:46,703
who has a criminal history.

884
01:01:46,786 --> 01:01:48,788
So what are these two guys doing together?

885
01:01:52,667 --> 01:01:54,836
[QCXINT] Patryn had more
of a digital footprint online.

886
01:01:55,670 --> 01:01:59,424
And that trail led me
to this site called TalkGold.

887
01:02:04,429 --> 01:02:09,267
TalkGold was principally a forum,
you know, for investment scams.

888
01:02:13,479 --> 01:02:15,857
It was a real den of thieves, TalkGold.

889
01:02:18,901 --> 01:02:23,906
People trying to run scams
and dodge other people's scams.

890
01:02:25,158 --> 01:02:31,038
Digging around in the archives, you know,
I come across lots of Patryn's posts.

891
01:02:31,622 --> 01:02:33,332
And one of the things
that I noticed on there

892
01:02:33,416 --> 01:02:37,253
is that
he's got this buddy called Sceptre.

893
01:02:40,173 --> 01:02:43,468
And Sceptre's also very active
on TalkGold.

894
01:02:44,135 --> 01:02:46,679
[Joe] Sceptre set up and ran

895
01:02:46,763 --> 01:02:51,142
at least two
of these online scams through TalkGold.

896
01:02:51,726 --> 01:02:54,312
You know, a lot of people
lost substantial sums of money.

897
01:02:54,896 --> 01:02:58,441
[Alexandra] Sceptre had this scam
called S&S Investments.

898
01:03:00,276 --> 01:03:04,614
S&S Investments provided very
little actual information about itself,

899
01:03:04,697 --> 01:03:08,785
and, you know,
it promised a massive return.

900
01:03:08,868 --> 01:03:10,745
And then, for a little while,

901
01:03:10,828 --> 01:03:13,623
they would
sort of start paying people back.

902
01:03:14,123 --> 01:03:18,211
Until one day, the entire
program just kind of disappears

903
01:03:19,212 --> 01:03:20,630
with everybody's money.

904
01:03:22,673 --> 01:03:24,300
Classic exit scam.

905
01:03:25,009 --> 01:03:27,386
Whoever this Sceptre is,
it seemed significant.

906
01:03:29,222 --> 01:03:32,058
But I just had this hunch
that it was Gerry.

907
01:03:33,392 --> 01:03:38,022
[Joe] I think it was probably around
that time I started to talk to QCXINT.

908
01:03:38,773 --> 01:03:42,568
We started to trade information
back and forth, essentially.

909
01:03:43,778 --> 01:03:46,823
I combed through,
like, every post Sceptre had made,

910
01:03:46,906 --> 01:03:49,325
looking for any sign of him.

911
01:03:49,408 --> 01:03:52,829
Like, slipping up
and revealing some personal information.

912
01:03:56,332 --> 01:03:57,834
No success with that.

913
01:03:58,709 --> 01:04:03,798
It was very frustrating, 'cause it-- it
kind of became this, like, personal quest

914
01:04:03,881 --> 01:04:06,092
to find out who Sceptre was.

915
01:04:07,635 --> 01:04:09,554
[QCXINT]
I kept just following the data trail.

916
01:04:10,346 --> 01:04:13,182
There was a critical piece
of evidence that emerged.

917
01:04:13,266 --> 01:04:15,685
It was this public site
called Black Hat World.

918
01:04:19,021 --> 01:04:22,066
A white-hat hacker is a good hacker,
an ethical hacker.

919
01:04:22,149 --> 01:04:24,151
A black-hat hacker is a bad type.

920
01:04:24,235 --> 01:04:26,571
They're the ones
that'll do the dirty work.

921
01:04:27,238 --> 01:04:31,158
One of the things I noticed, there's
a user on Black Hat World called Sceptre

922
01:04:31,242 --> 01:04:35,288
that changes their name,
that changes their handle to Murdoch1337.

923
01:04:38,791 --> 01:04:40,209
[Joe] And so I decided,

924
01:04:40,293 --> 01:04:42,295
okay, I'm gonna start messaging people

925
01:04:42,378 --> 01:04:46,632
on Black Hat World
who interacted with this account

926
01:04:46,716 --> 01:04:50,469
to see what email address
this account was using.

927
01:04:52,388 --> 01:04:55,308
And so a few days later
this person emailed back…

928
01:04:58,019 --> 01:05:00,146
and included some screenshots.

929
01:05:01,147 --> 01:05:02,398
I opened it up.

930
01:05:03,482 --> 01:05:06,110
My heart is beating really fast.
I feel like, "Oh, I'm so close."

931
01:05:07,904 --> 01:05:09,363
One of those screenshots

932
01:05:09,447 --> 01:05:12,575
was the order form
that this account filled out.

933
01:05:13,868 --> 01:05:15,661
It had his full name in there.

934
01:05:17,663 --> 01:05:18,706
Gerry Cotten.

935
01:05:22,877 --> 01:05:25,963
Gerry was Sceptre. That was a direct link.

936
01:05:26,047 --> 01:05:28,758
And we're like, "Yes! We got him."

937
01:05:32,887 --> 01:05:36,599
It threw the whole thing
into a darker, more sinister context.

938
01:05:37,558 --> 01:05:39,602
Gerald, starting with you.

939
01:05:39,685 --> 01:05:41,437
-Yes.
-What's your story?

940
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:43,856
You were born. Now you're here.
What happened in between?

941
01:05:43,940 --> 01:05:45,107
[chuckles]

942
01:05:46,108 --> 01:05:49,403
[QCXINT] Not only had one founder
of the exchange had a shady past,

943
01:05:49,987 --> 01:05:51,822
it was actually both founders.

944
01:05:53,115 --> 01:05:55,743
Kind of removes that veil of Gerry,

945
01:05:56,494 --> 01:05:58,788
boy next door, kind of likable nerd.

946
01:06:00,122 --> 01:06:03,209
What you actually start to see
is something a lot more sinister.

947
01:06:06,963 --> 01:06:11,050
This Sceptre character,
this other, you know, darker Gerry…

948
01:06:11,801 --> 01:06:13,177
[laughing]

949
01:06:13,260 --> 01:06:15,054
[QCXINT] …has been operating scams…

950
01:06:17,139 --> 01:06:19,642
since he was 14 or 15.

951
01:06:22,395 --> 01:06:27,191
[Joe] What it showed is
that Gerry was a serial scammer.

952
01:06:29,485 --> 01:06:32,697
[QCXINT] Sceptre posts
about hiring a programmer

953
01:06:32,780 --> 01:06:34,573
to build a cryptocurrency exchange.

954
01:06:43,082 --> 01:06:45,626
And less than three months or so later,

955
01:06:46,585 --> 01:06:47,920
Quadriga was born.

956
01:06:51,632 --> 01:06:52,633
[clears throat]

957
01:06:52,717 --> 01:06:55,219
Quadriga had been architected

958
01:06:55,302 --> 01:06:59,432
from the very beginning,
uh, to be a scam of sorts.

959
01:07:01,767 --> 01:07:04,770
[Alexandra] Revealing all of these
other things that he had done

960
01:07:04,854 --> 01:07:08,065
gave people this feeling,
like he's scammed us yet again

961
01:07:08,149 --> 01:07:10,943
and maybe he actually
is still alive somewhere.

962
01:07:15,364 --> 01:07:18,242
My name is Gerald Cotten,
and I'm the founder of QuadrigaCX.

963
01:07:22,830 --> 01:07:28,419
It did make me question
that maybe he had intentions of, you know,

964
01:07:28,502 --> 01:07:32,882
starting this business and running away
with the funds like he had in the past.

965
01:07:32,965 --> 01:07:34,508
[computer chiming]

966
01:07:45,186 --> 01:07:50,566
[Ali] He's literally insulting you
and stealing from you in daylight,

967
01:07:50,649 --> 01:07:52,276
and then he's walking away.

968
01:07:52,359 --> 01:07:53,694
[computer chiming]

969
01:08:01,911 --> 01:08:05,206
If Gerry was alive, then there was
a chance they could get their money back.

970
01:08:05,706 --> 01:08:11,462
That's ultimately why The Globe decided
to send Nathan Vanderklippe to India.

971
01:08:11,545 --> 01:08:13,547
[suspenseful music playing]

972
01:08:33,067 --> 01:08:35,319
[man 13] As a journalist,
when you get assigned a story,

973
01:08:35,402 --> 01:08:38,114
one of the first questions
that goes through your mind is,

974
01:08:38,197 --> 01:08:39,949
"Are you gonna be able
to deliver anything?"

975
01:08:40,032 --> 01:08:43,577
And the idea
of going to try to make some sense

976
01:08:43,661 --> 01:08:47,998
of whether someone
had actually died in India,

977
01:08:48,582 --> 01:08:51,836
it just seemed,
frankly, practically impossible.

978
01:08:52,837 --> 01:08:56,841
I got to India, and from there,
it was just a question of going out

979
01:08:56,924 --> 01:09:00,094
and trying to make sense
of what was real and what wasn't,

980
01:09:00,177 --> 01:09:01,387
and it felt to me like

981
01:09:01,470 --> 01:09:04,557
the most obvious place
to start was at the hospital.

982
01:09:05,391 --> 01:09:10,521
I had found out the name of the doctor,
and so I went to his office.

983
01:09:10,604 --> 01:09:13,774
He held up a prescription pad
and asked what he could get for me,

984
01:09:13,858 --> 01:09:16,652
and I said, "No, no, no, I'm not--
I'm not looking for medicine."

985
01:09:16,735 --> 01:09:20,656
"I'm looking for some information about
this Canadian who had died in Jaipur."

986
01:09:20,739 --> 01:09:24,285
He knew exactly what I was talking about.
He remembered this all quite clearly.

987
01:09:26,245 --> 01:09:28,747
And he talked me through
what had happened.

988
01:09:29,707 --> 01:09:31,458
So this is what I wrote about it.

989
01:09:31,542 --> 01:09:34,837
"Mr. Cotten and Ms. Robertson
arrived at 9:45 p.m."

990
01:09:37,590 --> 01:09:42,344
He was, quote, "admitted
with symptoms of acute gastroenteritis."

991
01:09:43,179 --> 01:09:45,055
"Mr. Cotten had vomited ten times,

992
01:09:45,139 --> 01:09:48,893
reported 15 episodes
of watery stools, was feverish,

993
01:09:48,976 --> 01:09:51,353
and had a background of Crohn's disease."

994
01:09:52,229 --> 01:09:56,775
"Still, the initial diagnosis pointed
to little more than traveler's diarrhea."

995
01:09:57,276 --> 01:09:59,445
"Mr. Cotten spent the night
in a private room

996
01:09:59,528 --> 01:10:01,488
where Ms. Robertson also stayed."

997
01:10:03,532 --> 01:10:06,994
"Sometime around noon the next day,
his condition took a sharp turn."

998
01:10:08,662 --> 01:10:11,081
"'He became fulminant,' Dr. Sharma said."

999
01:10:13,292 --> 01:10:17,004
"A medical term describing
a rapid and severe deterioration."

1000
01:10:18,547 --> 01:10:22,384
"At 2:45 p.m.,
Mr. Cotten went into cardiac arrest."

1001
01:10:23,302 --> 01:10:26,180
[machines beeping]

1002
01:10:29,808 --> 01:10:32,228
"He was resuscitated,
but his blood pressure was low,

1003
01:10:32,311 --> 01:10:34,188
and he was placed on a ventilator."

1004
01:10:36,565 --> 01:10:38,692
"He went into cardiac arrest again."

1005
01:10:41,403 --> 01:10:43,364
"And was resuscitated once more."

1006
01:10:47,117 --> 01:10:48,118
"But the third time,

1007
01:10:49,662 --> 01:10:51,163
he could not be revived."

1008
01:10:54,458 --> 01:10:58,254
"At 7:26 p.m.,
Mr. Cotten was declared dead."

1009
01:11:06,220 --> 01:11:09,265
That all sort of points in the direction

1010
01:11:09,348 --> 01:11:12,810
of this having been a death
and perhaps a death of natural causes.

1011
01:11:12,893 --> 01:11:15,271
I showed Dr. Sharma a couple pictures
on my phone of Gerry

1012
01:11:15,354 --> 01:11:18,607
and said, "Is this the guy?"
And Dr. Sharma said, "That's the guy."

1013
01:11:22,569 --> 01:11:25,990
[Kimberly] It was Jenny who really
wanted to go to India. Gerry did not.

1014
01:11:26,740 --> 01:11:29,076
Unfortunately for Jenny,

1015
01:11:29,159 --> 01:11:32,621
even to this day,
she feels really guilty about that.

1016
01:11:32,705 --> 01:11:34,331
She was devastated.

1017
01:11:34,415 --> 01:11:39,336
Because she's so lovely and loving
and generous and kind and happy,

1018
01:11:40,546 --> 01:11:45,009
she was really broken.
I was really afraid for her.

1019
01:11:47,344 --> 01:11:51,473
[Alexandra] To me, this idea
that Gerry was still alive

1020
01:11:51,557 --> 01:11:55,269
was laid to rest
when Nathan went to India.

1021
01:11:56,270 --> 01:11:57,688
I was like, "Okay, he's dead."

1022
01:11:58,439 --> 01:12:00,858
After that, I didn't entertain the idea.

1023
01:12:08,699 --> 01:12:09,908
[computer chiming]

1024
01:12:22,338 --> 01:12:27,426
Everyone is sort of shocked,
confused at the time.

1025
01:12:27,509 --> 01:12:30,137
That's where we were at, at that point.

1026
01:12:30,220 --> 01:12:34,099
We just had no ground to sort of walk on.
We didn't know where we were at.

1027
01:12:35,559 --> 01:12:38,729
[QCXINT]
I think it was another blow at that point.

1028
01:12:40,647 --> 01:12:43,776
[Ali] Gerry's dead.
The money's still missing.

1029
01:12:44,568 --> 01:12:46,904
We don't exactly know where it went.

1030
01:12:48,489 --> 01:12:52,034
[QCXINT] When you're in this situation,
you're kind of endlessly optimistic.

1031
01:12:52,117 --> 01:12:54,953
There's surely another way
that we can get the money back.

1032
01:12:57,081 --> 01:13:01,585
We kind of still had more questions,
because maybe it wasn't enough.

1033
01:13:04,797 --> 01:13:07,466
[interviewer]
Did your article end the speculation

1034
01:13:07,549 --> 01:13:10,219
about what had happened to Gerry in India?

1035
01:13:10,302 --> 01:13:12,137
No, I don't think
it ended the speculation.

1036
01:13:12,221 --> 01:13:15,516
You know, there's still plenty of people
I think who have questions about it.

1037
01:13:17,142 --> 01:13:20,354
"Two months later, his rapid death
still troubles Dr. Sharma."

1038
01:13:20,437 --> 01:13:23,565
"Asked if he was certain about
what happened, he said, 'Not at all.'"

1039
01:13:23,649 --> 01:13:26,777
"His conclusion was based on
one of the best guesses

1040
01:13:26,860 --> 01:13:29,530
of what took a 30-year-old man
from a luxury hotel

1041
01:13:29,613 --> 01:13:32,491
to his deathbed
in little more than 24 hours."

1042
01:13:33,617 --> 01:13:35,494
"No autopsy was done on Mr. Cotten."

1043
01:13:39,665 --> 01:13:44,545
You know, in terms of some of the broader
questions about was there foul play here?

1044
01:13:44,628 --> 01:13:49,341
Those, it feels to me, are questions that
could only be answered with an autopsy.

1045
01:13:51,844 --> 01:13:54,847
Why was there no autopsy happening?

1046
01:13:55,848 --> 01:13:57,683
It's interesting, right?

1047
01:13:58,183 --> 01:13:59,351
Was this a natural cause,

1048
01:13:59,435 --> 01:14:01,645
or was Jennifer trying
to cover the story up?

1049
01:14:09,820 --> 01:14:13,991
[Alexandra] There was a lot of suspicion
around Gerry's death from the get-go,

1050
01:14:14,074 --> 01:14:14,908
right?

1051
01:14:17,661 --> 01:14:22,040
And the will deals with what should happen
in the event of Gerry's death.

1052
01:14:22,124 --> 01:14:25,335
So, of course, we wanted to get the will
to kind of see what was in there.

1053
01:14:26,128 --> 01:14:29,298
[Joe]
I just emailed the court in Nova Scotia,

1054
01:14:29,381 --> 01:14:33,051
and it's public information,
so they sent it to me in an email.

1055
01:14:34,219 --> 01:14:36,180
It's clear he's a wealthy guy.

1056
01:14:37,097 --> 01:14:40,058
The strange thing
about the will was that, wow,

1057
01:14:40,726 --> 01:14:45,189
he signed this, like, two weeks
before he mysteriously died in India.

1058
01:14:46,565 --> 01:14:47,858
That's odd.

1059
01:14:47,941 --> 01:14:49,234
[computer chimes]

1060
01:14:51,612 --> 01:14:55,282
He left all his assets
and all his money to Jennifer…

1061
01:14:58,494 --> 01:15:00,704
which is very, very suspicious.

1062
01:15:02,539 --> 01:15:06,210
[QCXINT] Suspicion really does begin
to fall more on Jennifer.

1063
01:15:07,711 --> 01:15:11,423
Here she is standing to inherit
the substantial property portfolio

1064
01:15:11,507 --> 01:15:14,218
and assets worth millions
and millions of dollars.

1065
01:15:14,718 --> 01:15:16,720
[computer chiming]

1066
01:15:25,062 --> 01:15:27,523
[Tong] It is possible that Jennifer
could have poisoned Gerry.

1067
01:15:27,606 --> 01:15:30,025
Then she could have just said
it was his Crohn's disease.

1068
01:15:30,651 --> 01:15:34,112
She could potentially have all the keys
and access to our money.

1069
01:15:37,699 --> 01:15:39,243
[QCXINT] With a little bit of digging,

1070
01:15:39,326 --> 01:15:42,871
it becomes apparent that
she changed her name a number of times.

1071
01:15:42,955 --> 01:15:44,248
[computer chimes]

1072
01:15:47,918 --> 01:15:49,545
She changed her name

1073
01:15:50,045 --> 01:15:53,382
three times
in the span of two to three years.

1074
01:15:53,465 --> 01:15:54,716
[computer chimes]

1075
01:15:58,303 --> 01:16:00,806
[Tong] I think first and last name
was Griffith.

1076
01:16:01,515 --> 01:16:03,183
And then it was Forgeron.

1077
01:16:04,101 --> 01:16:05,644
And then it was Robertson.

1078
01:16:06,228 --> 01:16:07,563
That's a lot of name changes.

1079
01:16:07,646 --> 01:16:10,440
Not a normal amount of name changes
for an ordinary person.

1080
01:16:10,941 --> 01:16:15,529
Then someone pointed out that there
was a Michael Forgeron that was murdered

1081
01:16:15,612 --> 01:16:17,698
in a case that has not been resolved yet.

1082
01:16:20,200 --> 01:16:24,413
[QCXINT] There's some speculation for this
to have been, in fact, her ex-husband.

1083
01:16:24,496 --> 01:16:28,750
If so, would this make it
the second dead husband that's died

1084
01:16:28,834 --> 01:16:31,044
in somewhat suspicious circumstances?

1085
01:16:31,128 --> 01:16:33,130
[mysterious music playing]

1086
01:16:35,132 --> 01:16:37,134
[computer chiming]

1087
01:16:48,353 --> 01:16:51,565
[Alexandra] The Telegram group
had spiraled out of control.

1088
01:16:55,569 --> 01:16:57,279
[computer chiming]

1089
01:17:04,286 --> 01:17:07,080
[Alexandra]
Jen had death threats made against her.

1090
01:17:07,164 --> 01:17:08,498
[computer chiming]

1091
01:17:17,257 --> 01:17:19,051
[Alexandra] I felt really bad for her.

1092
01:17:20,010 --> 01:17:25,057
She's mourning his death,
trying to sort out this mess of a company,

1093
01:17:25,140 --> 01:17:29,353
and meanwhile, everyone's suggesting
that Jen had actually murdered Gerry.

1094
01:17:29,436 --> 01:17:33,398
And there's absolutely no evidence
that anything like that had happened.

1095
01:17:33,482 --> 01:17:37,069
It was just a bunch
of really angry, misogynistic people.

1096
01:17:40,739 --> 01:17:42,532
Jenny did not murder Gerry.

1097
01:17:43,533 --> 01:17:44,368
[scoffs]

1098
01:17:44,951 --> 01:17:48,914
Her first husband,
his name was not Michael,

1099
01:17:48,997 --> 01:17:52,376
and he's very much alive and well.

1100
01:17:54,127 --> 01:17:58,423
The crazier the story,
the more somebody thought it was true.

1101
01:17:58,507 --> 01:18:03,512
Griffith, that's her father's surname.
And then she was married.

1102
01:18:04,471 --> 01:18:08,058
And when her divorce was coming up,

1103
01:18:08,141 --> 01:18:10,727
she said, "You know,
I really never liked 'Griffith.'"

1104
01:18:10,811 --> 01:18:15,607
So she did a legal change of name
to be Jennifer Robertson.

1105
01:18:16,316 --> 01:18:20,237
It just seemed like
they had this young woman

1106
01:18:20,320 --> 01:18:24,366
that they just wanted
to burn at the stake.

1107
01:18:24,449 --> 01:18:26,493
She's a witch. Burn the witch.

1108
01:18:26,576 --> 01:18:30,539
And it was so unfair. It still is.

1109
01:18:30,622 --> 01:18:35,460
The situation got so out of hand
that she needed to be put in a safe house.

1110
01:18:37,170 --> 01:18:41,299
She was in an apartment undisclosed,
somewhere downtown Halifax.

1111
01:18:43,719 --> 01:18:47,931
Even my brother and I,
we did not know where she was.

1112
01:18:49,641 --> 01:18:51,393
But it was that serious.

1113
01:18:51,476 --> 01:18:52,519
It was that

1114
01:18:53,395 --> 01:18:55,230
she also was that afraid.

1115
01:18:57,566 --> 01:19:02,779
What we really needed
was immediate, accessible proof

1116
01:19:02,863 --> 01:19:07,325
that showed that Jen
did not have all the money.

1117
01:19:12,789 --> 01:19:16,084
[Daniel] There were several times
where I was looking at the data,

1118
01:19:16,168 --> 01:19:18,879
wishing that I could have spoken
with Mr. Cotten

1119
01:19:18,962 --> 01:19:21,631
so that he could have
told me what happened.

1120
01:19:25,427 --> 01:19:30,891
You work so hard at finding
what happened in a case of a fraud.

1121
01:19:30,974 --> 01:19:35,854
And suddenly, you've found the one element
that cracks open your case.

1122
01:19:37,522 --> 01:19:41,818
We came across a series of fake accounts.

1123
01:19:43,361 --> 01:19:44,696
One of them was called

1124
01:19:46,364 --> 01:19:47,407
"Sceptre Gerry."

1125
01:19:50,410 --> 01:19:55,624
And what Cotten did was
credit these accounts with fake assets.

1126
01:19:56,124 --> 01:20:02,172
Hundreds of millions of dollars
and tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies.

1127
01:20:02,756 --> 01:20:08,053
And what he started to do was
trading against unsuspecting users.

1128
01:20:10,096 --> 01:20:14,351
Let's say a user is coming in,
and they want to buy a crypto.

1129
01:20:16,186 --> 01:20:19,314
Their account gets credited
with one crypto.

1130
01:20:19,815 --> 01:20:22,984
Unbeknownst to them,
that crypto does not exist.

1131
01:20:23,777 --> 01:20:26,488
It was Cotten responding to that order,

1132
01:20:26,571 --> 01:20:29,533
crediting their account
with fake cryptocurrencies.

1133
01:20:30,534 --> 01:20:33,995
And that's what he did
hundreds of thousands of times.

1134
01:20:36,164 --> 01:20:39,334
That's when we were able
to identify the link

1135
01:20:39,417 --> 01:20:45,757
as to why they were moving assets
to other exchanges located abroad.

1136
01:20:45,841 --> 01:20:48,134
Cotten was trying to get rich.

1137
01:20:48,844 --> 01:20:53,098
He's transferring the cryptocurrencies
that are owned by users

1138
01:20:53,181 --> 01:20:56,101
and sent them
to other platforms for trading.

1139
01:20:58,687 --> 01:21:02,941
It looks like Gerry, in a way,
treated Quadriga as his own piggybank,

1140
01:21:03,024 --> 01:21:06,069
that he could sort of dip
into the exchange and take money out.

1141
01:21:08,947 --> 01:21:14,452
In effect, Cotten was playing the casino
with users' assets.

1142
01:21:16,496 --> 01:21:19,916
But he found himself
losing instead of winning.

1143
01:21:21,543 --> 01:21:25,213
[QCXINT] Gerry, I mean,
he was a spectacularly bad trader.

1144
01:21:25,297 --> 01:21:29,467
You know, in amongst these kind
of periods where crypto is booming

1145
01:21:29,551 --> 01:21:31,052
and people are making ten times

1146
01:21:31,136 --> 01:21:33,972
or a hundred times their,
you know, their investment,

1147
01:21:34,055 --> 01:21:36,141
Gerry's managed to do the reverse.

1148
01:21:36,892 --> 01:21:42,689
Mr. Cotten lost approximately $150 million
by essentially gambling.

1149
01:21:45,150 --> 01:21:46,568
[computer chiming]

1150
01:21:52,866 --> 01:21:54,200
Oh my God.

1151
01:21:54,284 --> 01:21:57,787
I was already on antidepressants,
so thank God for that, but…

1152
01:21:58,580 --> 01:22:00,707
how could someone lose so much money?

1153
01:22:11,134 --> 01:22:14,429
Now, this is when it turned
into more of a Ponzi scheme.

1154
01:22:17,849 --> 01:22:21,770
In a Ponzi scheme,
if the individuals want their money back,

1155
01:22:21,853 --> 01:22:26,191
you simply take it from another user
who gave you money.

1156
01:22:26,274 --> 01:22:28,944
In other words, you rob Pete to pay Paul.

1157
01:22:30,737 --> 01:22:34,366
But, you see, the enemy of a Ponzi scheme

1158
01:22:34,449 --> 01:22:37,619
is people leaving your Ponzi scheme.

1159
01:22:37,702 --> 01:22:40,956
And that's what started happening
in early 2018.

1160
01:22:41,039 --> 01:22:42,874
Bitcoin took a serious tumble.

1161
01:22:42,958 --> 01:22:44,834
[reporter 6] It's now down almost 50%.

1162
01:22:44,918 --> 01:22:46,294
[reporter 7] 60%.

1163
01:22:46,378 --> 01:22:49,673
The prices started to drop very quickly.

1164
01:22:50,382 --> 01:22:55,220
That created a rush
by users to cash in on their profits.

1165
01:22:55,804 --> 01:23:01,184
Quadriga very quickly started to struggle
fulfilling those withdrawal requests.

1166
01:23:02,435 --> 01:23:07,732
Cotten was fulfilling the requests
of whoever was screaming the loudest.

1167
01:23:07,816 --> 01:23:10,902
He was really a fireman at that point,

1168
01:23:10,986 --> 01:23:13,279
extinguishing small fires where he could.

1169
01:23:15,073 --> 01:23:16,574
[man 7] Gerry's stuck in the maze.

1170
01:23:16,658 --> 01:23:18,910
[laughs]

1171
01:23:18,994 --> 01:23:21,079
[QCXINT] I've still got this image
in my head of--

1172
01:23:21,162 --> 01:23:23,123
of Gerry kind of getting stuck

1173
01:23:23,206 --> 01:23:25,208
in this maze
and running endlessly, you know,

1174
01:23:25,291 --> 01:23:27,711
round and round in circles,
trying to find the way out.

1175
01:23:28,920 --> 01:23:31,089
That's kind of
an ironic metaphor in some ways

1176
01:23:31,172 --> 01:23:33,091
for what happened with Quadriga.

1177
01:23:34,217 --> 01:23:38,972
And that's how Cotten was able
to be the mastermind

1178
01:23:39,055 --> 01:23:44,853
and a conductor
of this massive fraud all on his own.

1179
01:23:45,729 --> 01:23:49,774
In a typical situation,
we would have taken enforcement action.

1180
01:23:49,858 --> 01:23:52,944
However, because Mr. Cotten was deceased,

1181
01:23:53,028 --> 01:23:56,156
we couldn't have
our court hearing this case.

1182
01:23:58,450 --> 01:24:00,827
Okay, now scan the QR code…

1183
01:24:00,910 --> 01:24:04,247
[Taylor] Honestly, I'm still grappling
with, like, the video

1184
01:24:04,330 --> 01:24:08,168
where he's showing the kid
how to use the Bitcoin ATM.

1185
01:24:08,251 --> 01:24:09,502
[Gerry] Now put in the money.

1186
01:24:13,715 --> 01:24:16,551
You're running Ponzi schemes,
robbing people of money.

1187
01:24:16,676 --> 01:24:18,219
Those same people probably, right?

1188
01:24:18,303 --> 01:24:20,680
The kid's dad
probably put money on Quadriga.

1189
01:24:21,389 --> 01:24:23,433
How do you-- How do you do that?

1190
01:24:25,685 --> 01:24:27,937
[Gerry] Okay, now click "Send Bitcoins."

1191
01:24:31,775 --> 01:24:32,692
Done.

1192
01:24:33,401 --> 01:24:35,487
Um, we all hate Gerry Cotten. [scoffs]

1193
01:24:35,570 --> 01:24:39,157
He's, uh… The more I know about this dude,

1194
01:24:39,240 --> 01:24:42,952
like, the more I realize he was
just basically, like, a psychopath.

1195
01:24:43,036 --> 01:24:46,247
This person apparently
had no human compassion.

1196
01:24:46,331 --> 01:24:49,834
Uh, didn't care about people.

1197
01:24:49,918 --> 01:24:53,338
Scamming people's money. Didn't care
about people losing their life savings.

1198
01:24:54,005 --> 01:24:56,049
So not only did he take away my…

1199
01:24:57,634 --> 01:24:59,552
money, in a sense, he took away…

1200
01:25:00,804 --> 01:25:05,225
my dream and one year of my life,
just by stealing that money, right?

1201
01:25:05,308 --> 01:25:09,187
And I think that's more valuable
than the money that he took away from me.

1202
01:25:13,024 --> 01:25:14,567
[Kimberly] I was personally

1203
01:25:15,693 --> 01:25:16,528
angry,

1204
01:25:17,153 --> 01:25:21,199
'cause we so ferociously defended him.

1205
01:25:22,117 --> 01:25:25,495
It lent to us looking like we were liars.

1206
01:25:26,079 --> 01:25:29,541
It lent to Jenny
looking like she had lied.

1207
01:25:31,501 --> 01:25:35,463
Jenny was just as duped
as everyone else, if not more,

1208
01:25:36,464 --> 01:25:40,093
because as much
as everyone else lost money, she…

1209
01:25:41,136 --> 01:25:44,139
still has to question
what she knows for sure

1210
01:25:44,222 --> 01:25:48,184
about the person that she chose
to spend the rest of her life with.

1211
01:26:01,406 --> 01:26:04,951
[Tong] It's been two years
since, um, Quadriga went under,

1212
01:26:05,034 --> 01:26:09,330
and our chances of getting all
of our money back is very, very slim.

1213
01:26:10,707 --> 01:26:12,333
[Joe] I think when Bitcoin was booming,

1214
01:26:12,417 --> 01:26:16,588
people didn't
necessarily question Quadriga

1215
01:26:16,671 --> 01:26:18,840
or the companies
that they were dealing with.

1216
01:26:19,424 --> 01:26:24,387
You know, somebody like Gerry
could take advantage of that trust.

1217
01:26:28,975 --> 01:26:31,769
This entire thing,
Quadriga, the person behind it,

1218
01:26:32,478 --> 01:26:36,983
and my personal story as well
was shaped by greed.

1219
01:26:37,066 --> 01:26:37,901
And…

1220
01:26:40,278 --> 01:26:43,656
I can be honest
and say that I was-- I was greedy.

1221
01:26:44,908 --> 01:26:49,579
I think there are a number of reasons
why there were so many conspiracy theories

1222
01:26:49,662 --> 01:26:52,457
around what happened at Quadriga.

1223
01:26:53,541 --> 01:26:58,379
A big part of it is that the story had
a lot of strange elements from the get-go.

1224
01:26:59,088 --> 01:27:03,051
All of these coincidences
that kind of inspires the imagination.

1225
01:27:06,346 --> 01:27:10,725
[reporter 12] Outraged investors want
to exhume the founder's body

1226
01:27:10,808 --> 01:27:13,061
to make sure that he's actually dead.

1227
01:27:14,354 --> 01:27:18,900
If we exhumed Gerry's body right now,
they will claim that's not his real body.

1228
01:27:18,983 --> 01:27:21,236
That's what they'll do. I promise you.

1229
01:27:21,778 --> 01:27:25,740
If you DNA test the body,
then they'll say the DNA test is fake.

1230
01:27:25,823 --> 01:27:30,203
Yes, they will. They'll claim
the DNA tester is part of the conspiracy.

1231
01:27:30,787 --> 01:27:33,331
We need hard fact evidence,

1232
01:27:33,414 --> 01:27:37,543
and the only place that can provide that
is a little grave

1233
01:27:37,627 --> 01:27:41,256
that supposedly hosts
Gerald Cotten's body.

1234
01:27:43,716 --> 01:27:46,302
[Andrew]
Conspiracy theories breed in ignorance.

1235
01:27:46,386 --> 01:27:49,472
It makes it easier
for people to draw wild speculations

1236
01:27:49,555 --> 01:27:51,975
because the authorities
are not quickly enough

1237
01:27:52,058 --> 01:27:54,477
providing them accurate information.

1238
01:27:55,561 --> 01:27:58,481
'Cause if you force people
on the Internet to be the detectives,

1239
01:27:58,564 --> 01:28:02,777
that's what they're gonna do,
and they're gonna solve it their own way.

1240
01:28:07,282 --> 01:28:09,284
[mysterious music playing]