Jennifer Robertson and Gerald Cotten married in 2018. In this version of the story, scams beget scams and incompetence snowballs into recklessness and squander. He was accompanied by a girlfriend who drove her own Jeep. The Protocol Exploring the tech behind crypto. (Many who were born without white privilege, including nearly every Chinese person Ive met in Vancouver, has anglicized their name, says Patryn. In February 2019, Jennifer insisted she was not privy to the companys business, asserting that Gerry was solely responsible for its dealings. No autopsy was requested. After Bitcoin collapsedand the withdrawal complaints turned into lawsuits, negative press, and the threat of a formal investigationCotten got married, wrote a will, flew to India for his honeymoon, and disappeared. Robertson and Cotten met on a Tinder date in 2014, when they were both around 26 years old. It was also revealed that Cotten had written his will just four days before leaving for India. Patryn was described as ostentatiously secretivea trait not uncommon in cryptocurrency circlesand made vague allusions to a shadowy past and underworld connections. It'd be a form of closure for some people," said Small. Best Known As Gerald Cotten's Wife Jennifer Robertson's Husband Died On Their Honeymoon Cotten's Death Had The Crypto World In A Frenzy Has Disappeared From The Limelight Gerald Cotten was the founder of QuadrigaCX, once Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange. There were forums promoting promising new HYIPs; scam warnings; advice on creating ones own Ponzi, or how to get out early enough to profit; and offers of payment to boost fraudulent schemes on the site. He rejected Quadrigas application and forwarded his investigation to contacts in law enforcement. Cbc.ca. Crypto Long & Short News and analysis for the professional investor. While he lost thousands of dollars when Quadriga shut down, he said adding up the losses of friends and family to whom he had recommended the trading platform, the totalsits at more than $1 million. The Instagram account belonging to Jennifer Robertson showed that since 2016 shed taken trips to Macchu Pichu, Dubai, Oman, Myanmar, the Maldives, and Rio de Janeiro, often in private jets. The delay tactic is more successful than might be expected, since customers of HYIPs understand, on some fundamental level, that promises of outsized returns are too good to be true; besides, there was always another outrageous bargain a few clicks away. Quadriga mystery deepens with little evidence of cold wallets containing $250M, QuadrigaCX founder used aliases, moved assets into personal accounts: report, Lawyers for QuadrigaCX clients seek exhumation of late founder's remains, Curious about cryptocurrency? Gerald Cotten didn't just cause investors to lose millions he deceived his wife, Jennifer Robertson for years. More than three years after the sudden death of Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten and the revelations that the company was a massive cryptocurrency scam, his widow, Jennifer Robertson, tells her side of the story. All rights reserved. Both men soon graduated, however. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. The pizzas cost about $25, setting the price of a Bitcoin at one fourth of a penny. Despite all this, Quadriga should have had about C$200 million of its customers funds in its cold walletsthe external hard drives, disconnected from the internet, that functioned like bank vaults. (Robertson declined Vanity Fairs request for an interview.). Obituary -Gerald Cotten Wife, Death Cause, Alive or Death? Wikipedia But when the banks, the law, and the forces of Reddit tried to track down the cash, it turned out the young mogul may not have been who he purported to be. It was a gentle, unflappable smile. In 2017, as the price of a Bitcoin shot to nearly $20,000, Quadriga processed nearly $2 billion in trades from 363,000 individual accounts. Story of Quadriga's Trapped Cryptocurrency Fails Smell Test | Fortune (Patryn, Jennifer Robertson, and at least a couple of other Quadriga contractors each operated their own payment processing firmsa significant conflict of interest, though not illegal.) Cotten died later that same year of complications from Crohn's disease, when the couple was on a honeymoon in India. His clients were locked out of about $250 million, and investigators later found widespread fraud. Seasick marine biologist, turned journalist. It didn't take long for the withdrawals to become greater than Quadriga's profits. According to her, Gerry was in charge of the accounts by then. Gabby Petitos Life WithAnd Death ByBrian Laundrie. It may be that he traded Quadrigas funds in a frantic effort to recoup the losses he had sustained. If you lose the private key to your cryptocurrency walleta long, randomly generated password, all but impossible to memorizeyour funds are gone forever. His name was Gerald Cotten, and he went by Gerry; his girlfriend was a property manager named Jennifer Robertson, or Jen; her two Chihuahuas, who liked to sun themselves on the deck as the Gulliver negotiated the islands and shoals of Mahone Bay, were Nitro and Gully. Nobody followed up with him. You don'thave like Aaron Matthews [Quadriga's director of operations] or anybody that would be able tokeep the company on? Most conspicuous was the odd way that the young man always seemed to be smiling. Cottens generosity helped to compensate for a social aloofness that, despite his implacable cheerfulness, prevented him from developing close relationships. "I did let that go to the lawyers and the contractors, and I trusted that they knew what to do," she said. His name was Gerald Cotten, and he went by Gerry; his girlfriend was a property manager named Jennifer Robertson, or Jen; her two Chihuahuas, who liked to sun themselves on the deck as the. Cotten knew the catchphrases and the talking points, but he seemed most interested in Bitcoins speculative possibilities. The body was returned to the Oberoi and then sent out again to be embalmed; the embalmer refused to accept a body from a hotel, so Oberoi employees took it to a local medical college, where a staffer performed the procedure. Then he flew to India, where things managed to get even worse. The chat is also frequented by journalists, detectives from the FBI and RCMP, and several of the targets of the ongoing criminal investigations, including Patryn, whose exact whereabouts have been unknown for about a year. Perhaps Cottens obsessive foreign travelhe boasted of having visited more than 50 countries without ever having been searched by customswas inspired not by wanderlust but by strategy. He seemed lonely. He grew up in a large brick house on a quiet suburban street in Belleville, The Friendly City, a waterfront community between Toronto and Montreal best known for its cheddar cheese. They were to sponsor an orphanage in the country as well. Most people, a year after his death, already have. He was described as an ex-business partner who had met Cotten online over five years ago. He was like a ray of sunshine, Patryn told the interviewer. Gerald Cotten: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com Josh Marcus reports on the life and lies of the 'Bitcoin Widow' Thursday 14. It was difficult to imagine that this particular trait was contrived, but later, after it was revealed that nearly everything about him was a work of pure contrivance, you had to wonder whether the incessant smiling was just another part of the act. Cotten flushed. Sunnybrook is the largest yacht brokerage on Canadas east coast. In the original account, Cotten fell sick nine days into his Indian honeymoon, shortly after checking into the Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur on December 8, 2018. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He sent cash, in paper bags and shoeboxes, to coffee shops, laundromats, and pool halls. In his commentsboth in the group chat and in a private chathe has minimized his involvement in Quadriga and declines to speak in detail about his past. Patryn made people uncomfortable. What Happened to Jennifer Robertson and Where Is Gerald Cotten's - MSN While I warned people privately, I wasnt shouting it from the rooftops. Im Mike. Id like a boat that I can cruise locally, said the smiling boy, and then take south. He wanted to reach the Caribbean without having to stop in Canada or the United States. He ranted about his hatred of scam artists, though his definition of the term seemed rather idiosyncraticidentity theft was a clean, bloodless business, but when you lied to someones face, it was unforgivable. Roberston said she's sorry for Cotten's actions and the harm he's caused. Deeds for properties she bought in 2016 show she was once known as Jennifer Forgeron. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. And Ill carry that shame with me, probably, every single day for the rest of my life.. Looking for more? Overnight, Quadriga became Canadas dominant Bitcoin marketplace. But there were questions regarding Gerrys death and the events surrounding it. Its clients tended to be surgeons and litigators and C-suiters who travel from Toronto and Paris and Hawaii to summer in Nova Scotia; their wives wear silks and Manolos and perfect fingernails that cost $300 yesterday at the salon. Under the most charitable interpretation of Cottens actions, the public bid marks the moment that he decided to go straight. They always end our conversations with that question. QCXINT, the creditor and blockchain expert, said that the FBIs Vander Veer told him that with hundreds of millions of dollars missing and no body, its an open question. The only way to verify that the body Robertson brought home from India was Cotten is to exhume it. J ennifer Robertson was widowed when Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, died suddenly in India in December, leaving behind a business in chaos and as much as $180 million of cryptocurrency. After learning of his death, one of his contractors immediately went to the house and searched for it. It was not built, in its early days, to make money. ^ "Quadriga CEO's widow speaks out over his death and the missing crypto millions". He befriended Cotten in 2016 in Toronto, where Cotten had moved during the effort to take Quadriga public. Since the cost of Ernst & Youngs investigation is borne by the class, it made little sense to spend resources on highly speculative inquiries without assurance of success. Cottens efforts to win the trust of Bitcoin enthusiasts relied on his reputation in Vancouver, where he had become a director of the Bitcoin Co-op. What really happened to Gerald Cotten, Netflix's Crypto King? "And I remember asking him that in the car, like, 'What do you mean by that? During that time Quadriga continued to accept new funds but returned none. (TalkGold was run by twins Edward and Brian Krassenstein until 2016, when agents from the Office of Homeland Security seized their files and froze their assets but never charged them with a crime. Inside Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushners Gilded Florida ParadiseFar From Donald Trump or 2024, Chaos lingers at the periphery, but the Trump-Kushner marriage is thriving in exile. The series delved into the plight of the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. In January 2014 Salkeld posted a video on YouTube in which Cotten gently teaches his young daughters how to operate the Bitcoin ATM; Salkeld is certain that his two-year-old is the youngest person ever to have purchased Bitcoin. After Michael Perklin met Cotten at a cryptocurrency meetup,they became friends and Perklinlater became an investor. Dhanani, who was known on another message board as an expert in washing funds, was arrested in Southern California, where he was living with his family. Gox abruptly suspended operations, claiming that hackers had stolen $473 million from customer accounts. Robertson said while she isn'tfirmly against the idea of an exhumation, shewas withCotten when he died. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Gerry and Alex [Hanin, a web developer] created and ran Quadriga, with Gerry running operations.) By 2015, however, the same information that the TalkGold community had gleaned a decade earlier was starting to surface on Reddit: that Michael Patryn was really Omar Dhanani, a convicted thief and defrauder with ties to organized crime. The guy just always had a big goofy smile and laugh. Were excited, said Cotten at the time, to be able to provide an unparalleled level of transparency.. He would have new names and passports, perhaps a new face. The couple traveled abroad constantly, and they planned to sponsor a home for 12 children at an orphanage in India. In a statement released by her lawyer, she said she had no knowledge of Cottens improper business practices and was upset and disappointed when she learned of them through the investigation. Their companies websites often shared registration information and were operated by the same computers. And I'll carry that shame with me, probably, every single day for the rest of my life," she said. In the months that followed,investigatorsuncovered that Cotten had been moving money from the exchange into his personal accountsand engaging in other suspicious behaviour. After his release in 2007, he was deported to Canada. . (Courtesy of Jennifer Robertson) The first thing. When offered an electric motor for the life raft, the smiling boy gestured to his Tesla in the marinas parking lot. Sometimes hed introduce himself as Michael from India. The couple's relationship began in 2014 when Robertsonswiped right on Cotten's Tinder profile. Everybody is a genius, said Albert Einstein, and every Redditor is an Einstein. It wasnt his first rodeo. (Patryn denies saying that he came from other countries: Im not nationalistic.). gerald cotten belize But it was his past that, early on, became the focus of the Quadriga investigation. Gerry the Mastermind would count on the world believing he was reckless, greedy, and dead. By the time of his death, Cottens sham trading accountswhich had names like Aretwo Deetwo and Seethree Peaohhhad conducted approximately 300,000 trades. Its object was not to track down every lost Bitcoin but to maximize the pot of money that could be returned to Quadrigas creditors. The RCMP, which has jurisdiction over the case, has thus far not done so. Netflix's 'Trust No One': Who Was QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten? I love electric. The whole thing would cost $600,000, but expense never came uponly safety. In HYIP chat rooms, Cotten and Patryn defended each other against angry investors and posed as satisfied clients of each others various businesses; Patryns tended to be payment processors, Cottens were marginally more sophisticated iterations of S&S Investments. On May 24, 2013, federal agents in 17 countries arrested Liberty Reserves administrators, shuttering its website and seizing its records and bank accounts. After hearing that Patryn had been bragging all over Vancouver about his talent for laundering money, Mueller unearthed the connection to Dhanani. . She lives in Halifax. $215M missing: Mysterious death of CEO of Canada's largest They usually did the outreaching; nobody had reached out to them before. When Cotten died, Jennifer and Cotten tied the knot a little earlier. With that, Bitcoin became like any other form of currency, a mass delusion: Its value derived from the belief that it had value. Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King delves into the circumstances surrounding Gerrys death and what happened to the company after that. It was a terrible, terrible moment., She mostly remained away from the public spotlight apart from interview appearances in January 2022. She has co-authored a book titled Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions that details her experiences with Gerry. The Quadriga Fund was an HYIP that claimed to invest in venture capital projects and foreign currency exchange markets; it could be funded with Liberty Reserve and Bitcoin, using payment processors operated by Patryn. And the fact that he did what he did I carry his shame with me. Cotten was a quick study. It's not clear if the Nova Scotiaproperties will be caught up in the efforts byQuadriga'sclients to recoup their losses. There was a high tolerance for risk in the community, especially in 2015, she says today. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. Creditors began to ask questions online about the authenticity of the formal documents in a country notorious for the ease at which falsified documents can be purchased, particularly after they learned that the death certificate misspelled Cottens name, and that the former chairman and managing director of the company that ran the hospital had been convicted of financial fraud two months earlier. There is yet another possibility, one that none of the cases investigators is willing to discount. They were an odd pair. The smiling boy visited Sunnybrook Yachts in the summer of 2017, after the value of Bitcoin had reached an all-time high, having tripled in five months. But within a month after Cottens reported death, blockchain investigators proved that nearly all of the inaccessible wallets were empty. Around this time, Patryn changed the slug that appeared beneath his TalkGold posts to: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Benjamin Franklin.. He was sturdy and muscular, with blackwork tattoos and a face that in repose seemed to glower. Gerald Cotten was a like a dream to . A death in Cryptoland | CBC News The following year it launched a bid to be listed on the Canadian stock exchange, submitting to a full financial audit. How could a seemingly healthy young man die suddenly from complications with Crohn's disease? The little brother under the thumb finally grew some balls. Jennifer now lives in Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, with her two pet dogs. She decided that his involvement might mean that Quadriga was legitimate after all. Why did Robertson wait a month to notify investors of his death? How Gerald Cotten, the "Crypto King," Really Died - Bustle She said she wants to move on with her life and hopes her new book, BitCoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions, is the final chapter of the Quadrigascandal. Two other properties, including Cotten and Robertson's home in Fall River, have been transferred to the Seaglass Trust, which lists Robertson as a trustee. It detailed C$12 million in real estate holdings, the Lexus, the Cessna, and the Gulliver; it left C$100,000 for the care of their Chihuahuas. Robertson said something Cotten said around the time they were drawing up the will didn't sit right with her. In its registration documents, Midas Gold listed as its contact gerald.cotten@gmail.com. So, if youre curious to find out more, weve got you covered. The Story Behind QuadrigaCX and Gerald Cotten, Netflix's - CoinDesk Cotten tried to scam Patryn; Patryn tried to counter-scam Cotten. He might be living on a private island, or in Hong Kong, Thailand, or Monaco, traveling by yacht and helicopter and private jet. She was allowed to keep money, a car, her wedding band, some jewelry, and shares in Quindraga Fintech, among other things. When it came to the case of the missing Quadriga millions, however, the balance was reversed. Archived from the original on 2021-05-22. And the fact that he did what he did I carry his shame with me. Quadrigas entire board resigned, leaving Cotten as Quadrigas only full-time employee. Flickering banner ads for investments in precious metals and foreign exchange funds and real offshore returns buffered message boards offering something for everyone: scammers, marks, and those who belonged to both categories. As a result, Jennifer had to deal with the legal ramifications. It was the largest online money-laundering case in American history: Liberty Reserves 5.5 million user accounts had conducted 78 million transactions worth more than $8 billion. The will made no mention of the external hard drives, called cold wallets, in which Cotten had stored most of Quadrigas funds. EXIT SCAM @exitscampod Twitter profile | Pikagi She wanted to sell the Gulliver. When Canadian blockchain whiz Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly last year, hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds vanished into the crypto ether. The amateurs most valuable advantage is time. There were other financial problems for Cotten, too: CIBC had frozen $26 millionof the company's funds because of "suspicious activity" and another $10 millionwas locked away by a software bug. Crypto Long & Short News and analysis for the professional investor. She expressed a desire to move on with the next chapter of my life. She may have to change her name one more time in order to do so. He saw himself as an enforcerof rules, of integrity, of loyalty. Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyones Bracing for Apocalypse. (For months, Miller Thomson, the Bay Street law firm appointed to represent the class of creditors, received hundreds of emails a day inquiring about the lost funds, and answered such a constant barrage of phone callsheartbreakers about lost pensions and college savings, babies crying in the backgroundthat its lawyers could do little else.) It served as an independent payment processor for Liberty Reserve: a digital currency that was operated by an American in Costa Rica and used by drug cartels, human traffickers, child pornographers, and Ponzis to launder money. Now recruiting: Nova Scotia starts testing foreign-trained family doctors, Meet the student who went straight from a Kenyan refugee camp to Acadia, Home repair program in Yarmouth County aims to patch gaps in getting help, CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices. Every Bitcoin transaction appears in a public ledgerthe blockchainthat can be consulted by anybody with internet access. Often Quadriga was the only Bitcoin company willing to pay for a sponsorship. Regarding speculation that he was still alive, Jennifer said, I saw Gerry die; I was holding his hand when he passed away. It is theoretically possible to conduct high-volume trades in such a way as to launder funds, provided that the trades are exotic enough to ensure that the losses accrue to another account that Cotten, or an associate, controls. The Seaglass Trustbecame the mortgage holder on all properties owned by Robertson Nova Property Management on Jan. 25. He used to say he didnt open up to many people, but he was able to open up to me.. It begins with a few findings that do not fit neatly into the Royal Fuckup narrative. "Whenever people put their money into the exchange, he sort of used it as his personal slush fund," she said. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6. Gerald Cotten died suddenly in 2018 and took keys to $250 million in cryptocurrency assets to his grave. The exchange took a cut of every transaction. Seventy percent of the global Bitcoin trade was conducted through Mt. Castor said Cotten operated Quadriga like a Ponzi scheme. He took to hisgrave the passcodesthat locked about $250 million in other people's assets in his exchange, QuadrigaCX. A couple of years after graduation, Cotten moved to Vancouver and joined a clubby community of entrepreneurs who had become enamored with Bitcoin. Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp. shut down in January following the death of founder and Chief Executive Officer Gerald Cotten, leaving some 115,000 customers out of pocket for about $260 million in cryptocurrencies and cash. They were excited. When national news articles began to appear a month later, they emphasized another detail: Cotten was the only person with the passwords to the accounts holding Quadrigas fundscryptocurrency and cashworth approximately a quarter billion U.S. dollars. The Secret Life and Strange Death of Quadriga Founder Gerald Cotten He ran the business from his MacBook Pro, which he always carried with him. When you invest with Quadriga, you remain in control.. Gerald Cotten, 30, was the CEO of QuadricaCX, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Canada which defaulted last year following his death while abroad with his wife Jennifer Robertson.. It was quickly very clear that he wasnt who he said he was. Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange, and had to be funded by sending a bank wire to Japan. We are not sure about the diagnosis, he said. . Midas Gold was an intermediary between Liberty Reserve and its traders, transferring cash into digital currency and back again, ensuring that no centralized record of clients existed. After the public bid failed, he kept no internal recordsan almost inconceivable state of affairs for a company with an annual trading volume of more than $1 billion. That was our perception, at least., (Patryn has argued the reverse: that he quit Quadriga because he disagreed with Cottens decision to abandon the public listing. In April 2013, around the time that Cotten appeared in Vancouver, the price of a Bitcoin had risen to $266. It looked hollow.. Within months, things went from bad to worse for everyone involved. Other red flags raised by investors surrounding Cotten's death included his name being spelled incorrectly on the death certificate and his closed casket funeral. There was no such constraint on the outraged creditorsor the true believers who saw in Quadrigas collapse an existential threat to cryptocurrencys integrity at just the moment it had assumed an eggshell veneer of legitimacy. It was so hard to buy Bitcoin in Canada, says Cotten in his unflappably peppy, inquisitive voice, in a 2014 interview. In 2010 he graduated with a bachelors degree in business administration from an honors program at York Universitys Schulich School of Business in Toronto. Early on, Robertson was also processing funds acting as a funnel for customer money on behalf of QuadrigaCX. This meant that multiple customers were missing over $180 million.