WEBVTT FILE

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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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[mysterious music playing]

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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[distorted voice]
I never knew who Gerry was.

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My name is Gerald Cotten,
and I'm the founder of QuadrigaCX.

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[wolf man] And I actually
didn't need to know who Gerry was.

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When you're conducting
business across the Internet,

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you're putting your trust in
this little kind of veneer of the website.

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[computer dings]

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It's a bunch of HTML pages
cobbled together with string and tape.

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Strip the veneer away and you
realize how actually fragile that is

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and that actually
behind that website are real people.

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[clicking]

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And it's those people
that you need to trust.

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[mysterious music continues]

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[computer chimes]

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This is a real mystery
that's unfolding this morning,

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and it all has to do
with the death of Gerald Cotten,

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along with
the disappearance of $250 million.

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Where is this money?

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[reporter]
About 110,000 customer accounts.

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[man 2] This was all my money,
my life savings, everything.

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[computer chimes]

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[reporter 2] It puts this whole
Bitcoin world in the crosshairs.

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There's some people suggesting
that maybe he's not dead.

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[woman] Allegedly, Gerry faked
his own death and ran off with the money.

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He was now in hiding and had had
his face modified by a plastic surgeon.

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[man laughing]

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[man 3]
He could be a citizen of 20 countries

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under 20 different faces
and 20 different names.

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Okay, now scan the QR code…

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[man 4] He doesn't come off
as a sophisticated criminal mastermind.

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[whirring]

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[chuckles]

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[wolf man] There were
so many different pieces to the story.

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So many questions.

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[phone chimes]

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[man 5] We need to get
to the bottom of this.

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[woman 2] It turned into a shit tornado
of catastrophic proportions.

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[computer chiming]

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[man 3] Either I know a guy who screwed up
and lost a quarter billion,

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or I know a guy who pulled off one
of the greatest crimes in history.

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[suspenseful music playing]

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[mysterious music playing]

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[man 6] Bitcoin can change the world.

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That's my belief.

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I believe that Gerry
thought the same thing.

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Bitcoin is counterculture.

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There's an element of rebellion to it,
and in that regard, you could say, uh,

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there's a bit of rock and roll
going on to Bitcoin.

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But a lot of crypto people

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either are paranoid
or specifically distrust people.

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Trust is not common in my industry.

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I bet a lot of them
did not agree to do this.

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[energetic music playing]

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[man 3] There's only so much time
to, uh, exercise

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when you're living the crypto life,
so you do what you can.

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Me, I'm, u…
I'm really, like, a number guy.

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I don't do words. I do numbers.

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Yeah, I definitely trust technology
more than I do people.

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That's awesome.

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When I first heard about Bitcoin,
it was, like, early 2013.

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I'd found the local community here.

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Uh, we were just meeting
in restaurants once a week

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and just talking about Bitcoin.

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You know, the same
eight to 12 people every time.

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It was through the Bitcoin co-op
and community that I met Gerry Cotten.

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Gerald, starting with you.

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-Yes.
-What's your story?

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You were born. Now you're here.
What happened in between?

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[chuckles]

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Gerry came across
friendly, positive, upbeat.

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He always laughed.

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Like, I don't know
what Gerry would look like angry.

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[man 7] Gerry's stuck in the maze.

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[laughs]

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Everyone that was part of that scene
at the time was definitely very nerdy.

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[whirring]

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I wouldn't describe any of us
as really fitting in anywhere.

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[Gerry laughs]

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Everyone has a thing they're a nerd
about, and they just like that thing.

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I think it's all right.

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It seems like Gerry's was business.

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[Gerry] Bitcoin is a digital currency.

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It's basically like you have cash,
but it exists only in digital form.

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Gerry was an incredibly charming,
very smart promoter of the technology.

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The Bitcoin community
is trying to move away

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from the traditional forms of currency
and into this modern, digital currency,

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which doesn't have the bureaucracy
of the banks.

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Smart, um, and knew it.

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But one of the hardest parts
was acquiring the Bitcoin.

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Especially in Canada.

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So I created QuadrigaCX in 2013

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for buying and selling Bitcoin.

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[Gerry] So for those who aren't familiar
with Bitcoin exchanges and what we do,

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I like to compare it to a stock exchange.

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However, instead of trading stocks
in our exchange, people trade Bitcoin.

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[Amber] In its simplest form,

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a cryptocurrency exchange is
something that would allow you to exchange

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between Bitcoin and dollars,
dollars and Bitcoin.

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[beeps]

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And they make money by taking a fee

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for each
of those trades that they process.

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[Alex] The Bitcoin Club
had just been going to restaurants

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and just trying to find a place
to let us sit and talk about Bitcoin.

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When the Quadriga office opened,
Gerry kind of invited us all in, um,

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the whole community, and he said,
"You can just come here and hang out."

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"This can be
the place we talk about Bitcoin."

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You know, people had really high hopes
Quadriga would help legitimize Bitcoin.

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I see it as a pivotal moment
in the Bitcoin space.

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It's basically a new chapter as we move
towards the mainstream financial industry.

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[Andrew]
We were at the meetup having Bitcoin beers

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when, uh, someone said,
"Guys, check the Bitcoin price."

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It is the hottest currency in the world.

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Bitcoin's value has skyrocketed.

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The chart looks like the left-hand side
of an Eiffel Tower.

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And we all took out our phones
and started yelling like, "Oh my God!"

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"Guys, look. Oh my God! Look at it go."

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[reporter 3]
Bitcoin's value reached $11,000.

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12,000.

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[reporter 4] $15,000.

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$17,000.

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$18,000.

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The new currency is making
a lot of people rich.

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Ten years ago, it didn't even exist.

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I have to say
I'm feeling a bit of FOMO here.

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Bitcoin went from relative obscurity
to front page news.

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[reporter 5]
Bitcoin is becoming mainstream.

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Every bar I go into,
the bartender wants to talk about Bitcoin.

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When Quadriga was founded in 2013,
when Bitcoin was only worth $100,

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if you fast-forward all the way
to near the end of 2017,

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we had our, uh, touch of $20,000 Bitcoin.

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People would say, "Where should I get
Bitcoin?" I would say, "QuadrigaCX."

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[narrator] Introducing QuadrigaCX…

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If you had an interest in Bitcoin and were
in Canada, you'd heard of Quadriga.

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When we began,
we were a relatively small company,

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trading just a few Bitcoins every day.

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However, over the past year,

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we've grown to become
the largest exchange in the country.

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[applause]

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Every time there's a wave of adoption,
it's good and bad.

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You get a few new believers

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and a whole lot
of new people trying to get rich.

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Hi, everyone. My name's Tong,
and I'm a Chinese Canadian,

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and welcome to my YouTube channel.

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On my YouTube channel, there's a lot
of different types of videos.

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[whirring]

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[Tong] And I hope you enjoy watching them
as much as I enjoy making them.

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And, uh, thanks for watching.

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I was in San Francisco.
You know, I'm a software engineer.

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Even though software engineers
make good salaries in San Francisco,

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after working with virtually no stop
for the past, um, seven, eight years,

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I wanted to quit.
Travel or do something like that.

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A lot of my friends made a lot of money
on cryptocurrency.

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They were making hundreds
of thousands of dollars at the time.

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Oh my gosh. Look at this thing!

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[engine revs]

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In 2011, I bought Bitcoin at $2.52.

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And so, technically,
this Lamborghini only cost me about $115.

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[engine revs]

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[man 8] Whoo-hoo!

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So I was like,
"Okay, I gotta get some money too,"

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so I just took out three loans.

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It was about $85,000 in total.

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And I put it all
into different cryptocurrencies.

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[grunts]

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Nobody has the patience
to wanna get rich slow.

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I wanted to keep up with my friends.

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Ah.

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Yeah, that's good.

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[Gerry] As of now, Canada's approximately
one percent of the global trading volume.

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So as we expand globally,

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we'll be able to grow and
our profits will increase dramatically.

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[man 9] And let me paint the picture.

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Mr. Cotten looks probably exactly what you
think an Internet genius would look like.

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-A young, attractive man.
-[Gerry laughs]

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So, yeah, yeah, he's exactly
what you picture in your mind.

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How many coins
did you buy at a time like this?

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[Gerry] Oh, like, a hundred.

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[man 9] Really?

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[Gerry] It was very profitable. And--

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[man 9] Are we hanging out with Mark
Zuckerberg? Is that what's going on?

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[Gerry laughs]

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In 2017, they did so well,
like, everything's falling in your lap.

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Um, probably millions. No, not probably.
Definitely tens of millions.

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He was buying a plane.

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Buying a boat.

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A little island, too, apparently.

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He started acquiring properties.

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And had been recently married.

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Here we go.

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[Amber]
He was not flashy when he was here.

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00:11:05.206 --> 00:11:08.125
He was
a button-down shirt, jeans type of guy.

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-Now he was living the high life.
-[Gerry] …away!

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[uplifting music playing]

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Traveling around the world
and was living a digital nomad lifestyle.

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And just working from wherever he was,
which was fantastic.

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Bitcoin rose and rose and rose.

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And ultimately, it crashed.

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00:11:53.504 --> 00:11:54.505
And, uh,

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I think that was the beginning
of troubles at QuadrigaCX.

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00:12:02.513 --> 00:12:07.101
The Bitcoin roller coaster
continues to be on a wild ride tonight.

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00:12:07.184 --> 00:12:11.856
The cryptocurrency has gone
from hitting a new record price yesterday

204
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to nose-diving today.

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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.

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00:12:22.867 --> 00:12:24.702
[reporter 6] It's now down almost 50%.

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00:12:24.785 --> 00:12:26.162
[reporter 7] 60%.

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By December 2018, by the end of the year,

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00:12:28.831 --> 00:12:31.667
I think Bitcoin was around $4,000 US.

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People who thought they were wealthy
will suddenly become bankrupt overnight.

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[reporter 8] In just 24 hours,

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more than $60 billion
was wiped off the value

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00:12:42.303 --> 00:12:44.096
of the entire cryptocurrency market.

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[man 10] What's causing this crash?

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00:12:46.891 --> 00:12:49.435
Usually, it isn't really easy to tell.
There are different factors.

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00:12:49.518 --> 00:12:52.313
But for once,
this time, it's very clear what it was.

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China and South Korea
wants to ban Bitcoin trading.

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00:12:55.232 --> 00:12:58.944
And that was enough to really drive
down the price of these cryptocurrencies.

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[Tong] I had a lot of debt
because I took out $85,000 in loans.

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00:13:08.037 --> 00:13:10.164
I was down maybe 70, 80% on that.

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00:13:12.958 --> 00:13:15.252
The interest
was really high on these loans,

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and I was paying my mortgage.

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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.

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The only thing I could think of
at the time was to sell my apartment

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00:13:28.849 --> 00:13:30.100
to get out of that debt.

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00:13:35.314 --> 00:13:37.858
Of course, I had to pay off
the personal loans I took out

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00:13:37.942 --> 00:13:39.568
and then the mini-mortgage.

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00:13:40.194 --> 00:13:42.655
After all that, I had about $400,000.

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00:13:44.865 --> 00:13:47.868
I decided to move this $400,000
back to Canada.

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00:13:47.952 --> 00:13:51.372
You don't wanna use the bank,
because the bank will take 2% commission.

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00:13:51.455 --> 00:13:55.417
So 2% commission on $400,000
you can already guess is a lot of money.

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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]