The brutal murders of four Idaho college students shocked millions. Jennifer Robertson, Gerald Cotten's wife, was his life partner. But within a month after Cottens reported death, blockchain investigators proved that nearly all of the inaccessible wallets were empty. 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. "I saw Gerry die, I was holding his hand when he passed away. Nobody knew how to find the money. This would have been a startling about-face; in the early days, those who knew them believed that the company belonged to Patryn, with Cotten serving as a front man. Is Gerald "Gerry" Cotten Really Dead? - magostolla.pakasak.com He was careful and pragmatic. Another co-op member, Michael Yeung, rejecting the insinuation that Cotten had been out to make a quick buck, said he was in it for the long haul., In February the Canadian Broadcast Company interviewed Michael Patryn. Im Mike. He was accompanied by a girlfriend who drove her own Jeep. He had seemed to appear in Vancouver out of thin air. (At press time those pizzas would be valued at $82,373,500.) Details emerging about Gerald Cotten, the young founder of QuadrigaCX He would count on most people to forget all about him. Quadriga sponsored local Bitcoin conventions and educational events, investments of $500 or $1,000 that yielded incalculable goodwill. 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. "Everything that I knew about Gerry seems to have been a lie. In the fall of 2016, Bitcoin began its wild rise. Perklin said he has no evidence Cotten is still alive, however. On the polished granite island are a vase of pink roses, the discarded lid of an ice cream carton, a copy of National Geographic, and dozens of dictionary-thick, rubber-banded stacks of Canadian currency in crisp 20s, 50s, and 100s. Widow of Bitcoin trader Gerald Cotten who died owing $215M tells of In this version of the story, scams beget scams and incompetence snowballs into recklessness and squander. After hearing that Patryn had been bragging all over Vancouver about his talent for laundering money, Mueller unearthed the connection to Dhanani. On Facebook he posed with a tiger, a lion, behind the wheel of a Lamborghini, straddling an ATV in a desert. Hi, he said. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6. In December 2018, Jennifer and Gerry traveled to Jaipur, India, for their honeymoon. Cotten had mentioned having a safe bolted to the rafters in the attic of his home in which he had stored the passwords to his various cryptocurrency accounts. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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. Sunnybrook is the largest yacht brokerage on Canadas east coast. . His wife, Jennifer Robertson, said he promised to create a mechanism that would give her the passwords after his death. Deeds for properties she bought in 2016 show she was once known as Jennifer Forgeron. Looking for more? Subsequently the brothers would gain Twitter notoriety for their incessant attacks on Donald Trump before they were shut down for operating fake accounts and purchasing followers.) We thought, finallyGerry is standing up to Mike. As it turned out, Michael Patrynas Michael Perklin and nearly everyone in the close-knit Canadian cryptocurrency community had known for yearswas not really Michael Patryn. Thousands of customers paid his company to mine cryptocurrency for them. She was allowed to keep money, a car, her wedding band, some jewelry, and shares in Quindraga Fintech, among other things. It took some time for him to grow on her, but they eventually fell in love. Midas Gold, which had begun to accept Bitcoin, was seized too. But looking at the information that I do know now, I do think he'd be the type of person who could orchestrate that.". They settled on a customized Jeanneau 51 with a pink and cream interior: three cabins, a dining area for six, a dishwasher, a gas stove, a washer and dryer, an en suite bathroom with standing shower, and a swim platform with teak battens. They were to sponsor an orphanage in the country as well. When you walked in, it was a very front-y feeling, says Joseph Weinberg. 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. Back in 2018, 30-year-old Cotten took a trip to India with his now widow Jennifer Robertson for their honeymoon and to open an orphanage. And I did think that was odd.". There were further questions regarding Jennifer changing her name from Griffith to Forgeron and then to Robertson. In India, Cotten remarked, the Canadian dollar went a long way. Where Is Gerald Cotten's Wife, Jennifer Robertson Now? - Ecelebritymirror Gerald "Gerry" Cotten died in 2018, taking with him a password to access funds Photo credit: Netflix. More commonly, however, he will blame external forces (a meddlesome bank that freezes its accounts), provide fragmentary refunds, and equivocate until its investors give up hope. Additional investigations were begun by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the FBI; and at least two other law enforcement agencies that have not been publicly disclosed (though one of them is likely a federal agency in Japan). He might be living on a private island, or in Hong Kong, Thailand, or Monaco, traveling by yacht and helicopter and private jet. 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. The sudden death of Gerald Cotten in December 2018 plunged the world of cryptocurrency into chaos. Small said exhuming the body would be one way to lay those theories to rest. All of it looked bad, but there was no confession of criminality. 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. If Trust No One was the first principle of Bitcoin, the second was Have a Plan B, and the third was Have a Plan C. If you lose the keys to your house, you can call a locksmith; if you forget the password to your savings account, your bank will provide a new one. All rights reserved. The public bid was a last-ditch effort to salvage a flailing Ponzi, exploiting positive press and public sympathy to bilk money from investors. On his personal YouTube channel (account name Gerryrulz) he had posted several dozen homemade videos as infantile as they were portentous: Gerry incinerating a $20 bill in his microwave; Gerry knocking over a Jenga tower with a giant teddy bear; Gerry stuck in an amusement park maze, repeating the same mistakes, unable to escape. After Michael Perklin met Cotten at a cryptocurrency meetup,they became friends and Perklinlater became an investor. It was a terrible, terrible moment., She mostly remained away from the public spotlight apart from interview appearances in January 2022. The court-appointed monitor, Ernst & Young, employed cryptocurrency experts but was roundly ridiculed for a string of blunders that began when, shortly after seizing control of Quadrigas remaining funds, approximately $1 million was inadvertently transferred to one of the accounts that Cottens death rendered inaccessible. His parents owned an antiques store; Cotten decided to go into crypto. It was then revealed that Gerry presumably happened to be the only person with access to the digital keys to the cold wallets that held the cryptocurrency. She believed in him. Mueller didnt understand how a federal convict had been able to change his name, continue to operate, and escape charges. The RCMP and the FBI have refused to comment, but some of their interview subjects have gotten the impression that they believe Cotten might not be dead. The Protocol Exploring the tech behind crypto. But users claimed they received deposits from Jennifer directly, seemingly contradicting her statement. It put us in a particular place of need.. ^ "Quadriga CEO's widow speaks out over his death and the missing crypto millions". He might even be eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. (Courtesy of Jennifer Robertson) The first thing. It was quickly very clear that he wasnt who he said he was. The broad outlines of his story were blandly conventional, at least if you subtracted his interest in decentralized monetary systems. 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. Cbc.ca. And Ill carry that shame with me, probably, every single day for the rest of my life.. He was driven to a private hospital and diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis. (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.) This meant that multiple customers were missing over $180 million. Theres no way that a man like Gerry, with all his knowledge and his mind-set, would leave it to chance. When Perklin read that Cotten was the only person with the passwords to the companys holdings and had made no contingency plan should he be unable to access them, whether because of incapacitation, kidnapping, or death, my jaw kept on dropping to the point where it couldnt have dropped anymore.. In this way Cotten could have stowed away a fortune in foreign bank accounts in preparation for a grand exit. Cotten may be hoping Robertson will join him once all the investigations have concluded, or she may be just another one of his victims. Forensically examining Instagram accounts, interviews, and police reports, author Kathleen Hale reconstructs their relationship, and ultimately Petitos murder. Crypto for Advisors What financial. In October, Robertson signed a settlement in the Quadriga bankruptcy case, agreeing to forfeit approximately C$12 million of assets to the creditor class. Crypto Long & Short News and analysis for the professional investor. The smiling boy stood out. (Robertson declined Vanity Fairs request for an interview.). He befriended Cotten in 2016 in Toronto, where Cotten had moved during the effort to take Quadriga public. He was busy. A year before his death he sent a colleague a photograph taken in the kitchen of his Kelowna home. The yacht salesman had questions, though it was not his job to ask questions. Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King delves into the circumstances surrounding Gerrys death and what happened to the company after that. With that, Bitcoin became like any other form of currency, a mass delusion: Its value derived from the belief that it had value. She was allowed to keep $90,000 in cash, $20,000 in retirement savings, a 2015 Jeep Cherokee, $15,000 in furniture and some jewelry, including her wedding band. His death left investors locked out of their money and left Jennifer Robertson, Gerrys wife, to deal with the fallout. Small said people were bringingduffel bags of cash to the home Cotten and Robertson shared. By the time of his death, Cottens sham trading accountswhich had names like Aretwo Deetwo and Seethree Peaohhhad conducted approximately 300,000 trades. But he never did. According to Quadrigas last public filings in 2015, it operated in a deficit. But just about every cryptocurrency expert in Canada had a Quadriga account. The whisper campaign likely began after Ryan Mueller, who conducted oversight for a third-party processor in Vancouver, was asked to review Quadrigas application. Some of the early visitors to the Vancouver Quadriga office even thought the exchange was just a show. All I will say is that we will generate your return and that we are not what is called a ponzi or pyramid scheme.. On one particular margin account, he conducted 67,000 individual trades alone, placing enormous bets on fledgling currencies like Dogecoin, OmiseGO, and Zcash. When S&S suspended operations three months later, taking most of its clients funds with it, Patryn took to TalkGold to defend Cottens integrity. The official cause of death was complications from Crohns disease, but the gastroenterologist who treated Cotten told the Globe and Mail that the death still haunted him. Robertson said she understands many people have been hurt and lostlargesums due to the collapse of QuadrigaCX. Still Cotten was not directly responsible for all of his troubles. That led to speculation that Cottenmayhave faked his own death. 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. Robertson was also not her birth name; she had gone from her given name, Griffith, to Forgeron and then back, following an earlier marriage and its dissolution, before finally landing on Robertson in 2016.