1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:37,338 --> 00:00:44,176 It's really a story about betrayal and lying and greed. 4 00:00:49,150 --> 00:00:50,282 [Clapping] 5 00:00:50,284 --> 00:00:52,017 We're here to talk about bitcoin. 6 00:00:52,019 --> 00:00:54,086 So, Gerald, starting with you. 7 00:00:54,088 --> 00:00:57,956 So I created quadrigacx in 2013 8 00:00:57,958 --> 00:01:01,427 and we basically are now the largest exchange in Canada 9 00:01:01,429 --> 00:01:02,828 for buying and selling bitcoin. 10 00:01:02,830 --> 00:01:04,696 [Clapping] 11 00:01:04,698 --> 00:01:05,998 Congratulations. 12 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,502 [Amy] Before Gerald cotten died in India at age 30, 13 00:01:10,504 --> 00:01:13,105 nobody could get their money off the exchange. 14 00:01:14,575 --> 00:01:17,810 [Alexandra] It's amazing that the biggest question I have 15 00:01:17,812 --> 00:01:22,114 is whether or not a person died. 16 00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:33,025 ["Greed and gold" by Seth lakerman playing] 17 00:01:38,165 --> 00:01:41,233 [Reporter 1] Reported death of Nova Scotia businessman Gerald cotten is tragic. 18 00:01:41,235 --> 00:01:44,069 [Reporter 2] When the 30-year-old died suddenly last month... 19 00:01:44,071 --> 00:01:46,839 Leaving apparently, 250 million dollars 20 00:01:46,841 --> 00:01:50,976 in cryptocurrency locked on his personal laptop. 21 00:01:55,049 --> 00:01:57,683 Sounds pretty bleak for investors trying to get their money. 22 00:01:57,685 --> 00:01:59,017 [Reporter 3] Cotten's widow, she doesn't know 23 00:01:59,019 --> 00:02:02,121 the passwords to her late husband's laptop. 24 00:02:04,058 --> 00:02:07,426 [Reporter 4] Most of the money is locked away in cyber space. 25 00:02:11,799 --> 00:02:14,166 This is a real mystery that's unfolding this morning. 26 00:02:14,168 --> 00:02:17,803 [Reporter 5] Right now investors, they can do nothing. 27 00:02:17,805 --> 00:02:19,638 [Reporter 6] Something is tremendously fishy 28 00:02:19,640 --> 00:02:22,875 about this whole exchange of where exactly the ceo went. 29 00:02:22,877 --> 00:02:26,311 Conspiracy theorists suggest cotten faked his death. 30 00:02:35,222 --> 00:02:36,989 [Reporter 7] Unless cotten made arrangements. 31 00:02:36,991 --> 00:02:38,891 [Man] A dead man's switch would be something 32 00:02:38,893 --> 00:02:42,361 that Gerry would've had to set up before he passed away. 33 00:02:42,363 --> 00:02:44,163 [Female reporter] Investors are looking for answers. 34 00:02:44,165 --> 00:02:45,397 Where is this money? 35 00:02:46,834 --> 00:02:52,004 ♪ Greed and gold ♪ 36 00:02:52,006 --> 00:02:56,508 ♪ forever the loneliest road ♪ 37 00:03:17,898 --> 00:03:21,667 There's so much intrigue, there's so much funny business, you know? 38 00:03:21,669 --> 00:03:23,602 So, it's kind of like connecting dots 39 00:03:23,604 --> 00:03:25,204 and see what you can come up with. 40 00:03:25,206 --> 00:03:28,140 [David] Maybe he was going to fake his death. Maybe he actually died. 41 00:03:28,142 --> 00:03:30,976 - I don't know. - That's another good question. 42 00:03:31,912 --> 00:03:33,979 [Amy] I am an independent journalist 43 00:03:34,548 --> 00:03:36,949 and I research cryptocurrency. 44 00:03:36,951 --> 00:03:40,152 First I got interested in it because of the technology 45 00:03:40,154 --> 00:03:45,557 and then over time that led to, uh, a fascination with financial crimes. 46 00:03:58,105 --> 00:03:59,404 Joe! 47 00:04:00,808 --> 00:04:02,074 [Alexandra] I'm a business reporter. 48 00:04:02,076 --> 00:04:03,942 I generally cover capital markets, 49 00:04:03,944 --> 00:04:07,813 but I've also kind of taken up this side hobby 50 00:04:07,815 --> 00:04:12,017 of writing about the sort of wacky world of cryptocurrency. 51 00:04:12,019 --> 00:04:15,621 I still sometimes just think about this story all this time later. 52 00:04:15,623 --> 00:04:17,956 - What do you still think about? - I don't know. 53 00:04:17,958 --> 00:04:19,925 There's so many crazy theories out there on the Internet. 54 00:04:19,927 --> 00:04:22,961 I found out about quadriga very early on. 55 00:04:25,966 --> 00:04:30,402 It was 2013, I was an intern at the Canadian press newswire 56 00:04:30,404 --> 00:04:36,341 and came across the fact that Canada was getting its first ever bitcoin atm. 57 00:04:37,978 --> 00:04:39,845 [Female reporter] It's now up and running at the waves coffee shop 58 00:04:39,847 --> 00:04:41,346 in downtown Vancouver. 59 00:04:41,348 --> 00:04:43,882 [Male reporter] The virtual currency is traded in cyber space 60 00:04:43,884 --> 00:04:46,451 and stored in the user's online wallet. 61 00:04:46,453 --> 00:04:48,387 [Female reporter] And you go to a business that accepts it, 62 00:04:48,389 --> 00:04:51,189 they ring you up, you can scan a code on your phone, 63 00:04:51,191 --> 00:04:55,327 your balance goes down and now you're enjoying your morning cup of tea. 64 00:04:58,065 --> 00:05:01,033 [Amy] A bitcoin atm is a standalone machine 65 00:05:01,035 --> 00:05:03,835 where you can go up, put in cash, 66 00:05:03,837 --> 00:05:06,305 and you can buy bitcoin just like that. 67 00:05:15,783 --> 00:05:17,582 Once you go through a bitcoin atm 68 00:05:17,584 --> 00:05:20,185 you've got your bitcoin and then you can 69 00:05:20,187 --> 00:05:22,487 begin trading it on an exchange like quadriga. 70 00:05:30,030 --> 00:05:34,232 [Clapping] 71 00:05:34,234 --> 00:05:35,967 So, for those of you who aren't familiar 72 00:05:35,969 --> 00:05:38,704 with bitcoin exchanges and what we do. 73 00:05:38,706 --> 00:05:40,605 I like to compare it to a stock exchange, 74 00:05:40,607 --> 00:05:42,107 however, instead of trading stocks 75 00:05:42,109 --> 00:05:44,409 on our exchange, people trade bitcoin. 76 00:05:44,945 --> 00:05:46,611 You have buyers and you have sellers, 77 00:05:46,613 --> 00:05:49,348 and they get matched, and they transact with one another. 78 00:05:59,960 --> 00:06:04,129 [Man] Our guest tonight is Michael patryn from quadriga. 79 00:06:04,131 --> 00:06:08,300 Well, in mid-2013 the only exchange of note in Canada was vortex, 80 00:06:08,302 --> 00:06:10,669 they had a monopoly which many believe they were abusing. 81 00:06:10,671 --> 00:06:12,270 So the co-founder Gerald and I believed 82 00:06:12,272 --> 00:06:15,307 that we could do better and, uh, quadriga was born. 83 00:06:19,546 --> 00:06:25,016 Michael patryn was about five years older than Gerald, 84 00:06:25,018 --> 00:06:27,299 so he, you know, I think he was like a big brother to them. 85 00:06:32,025 --> 00:06:35,827 [Keyboard clacking] 86 00:06:35,829 --> 00:06:41,032 So he was one of the people that taught Gerald the ropes in this sort of business. 87 00:06:42,136 --> 00:06:45,504 [Ryan] As far as, uh, crypto exchange founders go, 88 00:06:45,506 --> 00:06:48,140 Gerald actually had a fairly public presence 89 00:06:48,142 --> 00:06:53,445 presenting the image of a trustworthy businessman, of a trustworthy entrepreneur. 90 00:06:54,681 --> 00:06:57,149 And he was, you know, speaking our language. 91 00:06:58,986 --> 00:07:01,186 [Man 1] Today we are joined by Gerry cotten, 92 00:07:01,188 --> 00:07:02,721 the director of bitcoin co-op, 93 00:07:02,723 --> 00:07:04,790 the founder of quadrigacx.Com. 94 00:07:04,792 --> 00:07:05,957 [Man 2] And let me paint the picture. 95 00:07:05,959 --> 00:07:07,959 Mr. Cotten looked probably exactly 96 00:07:07,961 --> 00:07:10,061 what you think an Internet genius would look like. 97 00:07:10,063 --> 00:07:12,063 A young attractive man. 98 00:07:12,065 --> 00:07:15,066 [Man 1] I was doing some research 'cause I knew you were coming this week. 99 00:07:15,068 --> 00:07:17,803 To be honest, I got more confused doing the research. 100 00:07:17,805 --> 00:07:19,370 [Laughing] 101 00:07:19,372 --> 00:07:22,040 [Gerald] With bitcoin, so it's just a string of numbers and letters 102 00:07:22,042 --> 00:07:24,810 sending a payment to another string of numbers and letters. 103 00:07:24,812 --> 00:07:26,745 When I send the transaction, it's recognized 104 00:07:26,747 --> 00:07:29,047 by a bunch of other peers in the network. 105 00:07:29,049 --> 00:07:31,616 And then it's publicly recorded into the public ledger 106 00:07:31,618 --> 00:07:33,518 which is called the "blockchain." 107 00:07:34,988 --> 00:07:37,956 See, that's the cool part about bitcoin, there's a public ledger. 108 00:07:37,958 --> 00:07:39,791 So you can actually see all transactions 109 00:07:39,793 --> 00:07:42,227 - that happen in the bitcoin network. - [Man 1] Ever? Really? 110 00:07:42,229 --> 00:07:45,063 [Gerald] Ever. Yeah. So it essentially removes the need 111 00:07:45,065 --> 00:07:47,566 for a central authority. It's like the bank. 112 00:07:47,568 --> 00:07:49,634 It's interesting that this all kind of came out 113 00:07:49,636 --> 00:07:52,504 in the sort of aftermath of the global financial crisis. 114 00:07:54,041 --> 00:07:56,708 That crisis made a lot of people stop and go, 115 00:07:56,710 --> 00:07:59,211 "well, why are we trusting these financial institutions? 116 00:07:59,213 --> 00:08:00,846 Why are we trusting these banks?" 117 00:08:00,848 --> 00:08:02,848 [Gerald] There's no need for a central authority 118 00:08:02,850 --> 00:08:04,449 because everyone is a central authority. 119 00:08:04,451 --> 00:08:05,884 [Man 1] Oh, right. 120 00:08:05,886 --> 00:08:07,953 [Gerald] It's the beauty of it. Then you get rid of the fees 121 00:08:07,955 --> 00:08:11,156 - and a lot of the boarders and things like that. - [Man 1] Right. 122 00:08:11,158 --> 00:08:14,326 [Man 2] Well, how does Joe schmo get involved? 123 00:08:14,328 --> 00:08:17,596 [Gerald] Well, the first thing I recommend doing is visiting bitcoin co-op. 124 00:08:17,598 --> 00:08:23,001 [Upbeat music playing] 125 00:08:23,003 --> 00:08:24,703 You can find a ton of information there. 126 00:08:24,705 --> 00:08:27,105 Basically discussions about bitcoin 127 00:08:27,107 --> 00:08:28,907 and what's going on in the industry and so forth. 128 00:08:28,909 --> 00:08:33,545 This is the central. The door is magnet locked. 129 00:08:46,793 --> 00:08:50,729 We first got the place, uh, as a hang out for the crypto community. 130 00:08:50,731 --> 00:08:55,534 Bitcoin co-op. That's, uh, and we did all the outreach stuff. 131 00:08:57,504 --> 00:09:01,306 Uh, our hall of shame. Failed moneys. 132 00:09:02,109 --> 00:09:04,776 This is a, I don't wanna say central hub, 133 00:09:04,778 --> 00:09:07,345 that sounds oxymoronic or something. 134 00:09:09,783 --> 00:09:13,084 Quadriga, those guys, they came to the co-op 135 00:09:13,086 --> 00:09:16,087 offering basically to fund our outreach events. 136 00:09:16,089 --> 00:09:17,789 Like, we got a table at car free day, 137 00:09:17,791 --> 00:09:19,591 we gave away free coins to people. 138 00:09:19,593 --> 00:09:23,828 They got a lot of publicity for their associations with us. 139 00:09:23,830 --> 00:09:26,998 [Gerald] Every Monday night, we actually have our bitcoin co-op meeting. 140 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:29,334 So we've had times when 50 people show up. 141 00:09:29,336 --> 00:09:30,635 [Man 1] Oh, yeah. 142 00:09:30,637 --> 00:09:33,538 [Gerald] And everyone's just interested in bitcoin. 143 00:09:33,540 --> 00:09:35,907 [Alex] I get to the meetup early and Mike would be there. 144 00:09:35,909 --> 00:09:40,045 He'd walk me through trading concepts, and he just did this 145 00:09:40,047 --> 00:09:44,549 and the same way I get excited about bitcoin, he got excited about trading. 146 00:09:44,551 --> 00:09:47,018 He had money, and he was a confirmed good trader. 147 00:09:47,020 --> 00:09:50,121 You can look at him posting his public positions early on 148 00:09:50,123 --> 00:09:52,223 and making some really good calls. 149 00:09:53,560 --> 00:09:56,261 He was really nice, but so is Gerry. 150 00:09:56,263 --> 00:09:59,731 Gerry was really nice too. Always smiling, always happy. 151 00:09:59,733 --> 00:10:02,100 Pull that up to there. 152 00:10:02,102 --> 00:10:03,868 He helped my kids buy bitcoin from an atm, 153 00:10:03,870 --> 00:10:06,204 there's still a video on YouTube of that. 154 00:10:06,206 --> 00:10:08,473 Okay, now click "send bitcoins." 155 00:10:10,577 --> 00:10:13,044 [Alex] Yeah, he was a pilot for fun. 156 00:10:15,082 --> 00:10:17,949 And he was really just super friendly. 157 00:10:25,659 --> 00:10:27,592 [Amber] In many ways Toronto bitcoiners 158 00:10:27,594 --> 00:10:30,962 are a pretty small, um, tight knit community. 159 00:10:31,999 --> 00:10:34,866 I'm the founder and ceo at outlier solutions 160 00:10:34,868 --> 00:10:38,036 we're an anti-money laundering compliance consultant firm. 161 00:10:38,038 --> 00:10:41,439 So we spent most of our time trying to keep people out of trouble. 162 00:10:43,043 --> 00:10:45,043 I started going to meet ups. 163 00:10:45,045 --> 00:10:49,547 That was where I first learned about quadriga and where I first met Gerry. 164 00:10:50,384 --> 00:10:52,250 He was a really likeable guy. 165 00:10:53,053 --> 00:10:54,986 Cool. It works. 166 00:10:54,988 --> 00:10:57,355 He was a really bright guy, he was really funny. 167 00:11:00,761 --> 00:11:03,194 [Gerald] One of the best parts about Canada's new money 168 00:11:03,196 --> 00:11:06,231 is that it's fully waterproof. Check it out. 169 00:11:07,634 --> 00:11:09,934 [Amber] I was a person who had strong suspicions 170 00:11:09,936 --> 00:11:13,271 and I didn't come out and say that publicly back in the day. 171 00:11:15,242 --> 00:11:16,708 And I think that there are a lot of folks 172 00:11:16,710 --> 00:11:20,545 in the community that are in the same boat, 173 00:11:20,547 --> 00:11:24,015 where we had a lot of reservations in terms of quadriga generally, 174 00:11:24,017 --> 00:11:26,551 but we liked Gerry and we didn't wanna see them fail 175 00:11:26,553 --> 00:11:28,386 and we didn't call it out publicly. 176 00:11:28,388 --> 00:11:32,290 [Laughing] 177 00:11:38,699 --> 00:11:44,769 [Amy] In 2015, the two other major exchanges in Canada went out of business. 178 00:11:44,771 --> 00:11:49,040 And that made quadrigacx the main game in town, you know? 179 00:11:49,042 --> 00:11:52,343 That was, they were the big exchange at the time. 180 00:11:52,345 --> 00:11:56,081 What happened to the former largest bitcoin exchange? 181 00:11:56,083 --> 00:12:00,318 Um, they just cited a variety of reasons. Banking troubles, legal. 182 00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:02,987 We'll probably find out a lot more about them in the coming days, 183 00:12:02,989 --> 00:12:05,290 but as a result of them shutting down, 184 00:12:05,292 --> 00:12:06,891 - it's been great for me. - [Man] Yes. 185 00:12:06,893 --> 00:12:08,960 [Laughing] 186 00:12:11,198 --> 00:12:13,164 [Michael] It's been a very, very busy time 187 00:12:13,166 --> 00:12:14,098 and a very exciting time for us. 188 00:12:14,100 --> 00:12:15,533 Our volume has more than doubled 189 00:12:15,535 --> 00:12:17,902 since they announced closure of vortex. 190 00:12:17,904 --> 00:12:21,539 [Man] Well, we think you should buy a really big boat too. 191 00:12:24,211 --> 00:12:25,710 I think he'll get that before we get a boat. 192 00:12:25,712 --> 00:12:28,313 [Laughing] 193 00:12:28,315 --> 00:12:31,349 We have announced that quadrigacx will be going public. 194 00:12:33,353 --> 00:12:34,219 I know. 195 00:12:34,221 --> 00:12:37,756 [Clapping] 196 00:12:37,758 --> 00:12:40,859 In 2015, they start, you know, promoting it 197 00:12:40,861 --> 00:12:44,963 as the soon to be first publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange. 198 00:12:44,965 --> 00:12:46,664 Um, and at the time I thought, well, you know, 199 00:12:46,666 --> 00:12:49,934 "if they go public, that'll be a pretty big story." 200 00:12:49,936 --> 00:12:52,771 We have some plans that I'm itching to tell you about, 201 00:12:52,773 --> 00:12:54,139 but there are amazing press releases 202 00:12:54,141 --> 00:12:55,940 and I've been told to shut up about them. 203 00:12:55,942 --> 00:12:58,409 Michael patryn, he was kind of instrumental 204 00:12:58,411 --> 00:13:01,012 to this push to take quadriga public. 205 00:13:03,550 --> 00:13:08,853 And then the effort to take quadriga public ultimately fails. 206 00:13:08,855 --> 00:13:12,357 Patryn says that him and Gerry have a big falling out. 207 00:13:14,261 --> 00:13:16,594 His involvement in the company ended 208 00:13:16,596 --> 00:13:17,962 and he stopped knowing anything 209 00:13:17,964 --> 00:13:20,365 about the day-to-day operations of quadriga. 210 00:13:21,568 --> 00:13:23,835 [Ryan] It does seem as though Mike 211 00:13:23,837 --> 00:13:26,905 had ceased involvement in 2016. 212 00:13:26,907 --> 00:13:30,175 It seems that way. Emphasis on "seems." 213 00:13:57,904 --> 00:14:05,076 After that time, cotten operated quadrigacx as a one-man band. 214 00:14:07,080 --> 00:14:10,014 [Ryan] Maybe he didn't want to lose control. 215 00:14:10,016 --> 00:14:15,053 Maybe he kinda liked having the situation where he had total autonomy 216 00:14:15,055 --> 00:14:19,090 over this exchange and just so much power. 217 00:14:25,732 --> 00:14:28,700 People got into bitcoin because they liked the idea 218 00:14:28,702 --> 00:14:32,470 of getting rich for free. Magical Internet money. 219 00:14:33,473 --> 00:14:35,273 I'm a cryptocurrency journalist 220 00:14:35,275 --> 00:14:38,676 and the author of the book attack of the 50 foot blockchain. 221 00:14:38,678 --> 00:14:41,613 This came out in July, 2017, 222 00:14:41,615 --> 00:14:46,050 just as the big cryptocurrency bubble was on its upswing. 223 00:14:49,623 --> 00:14:52,924 I started putting a few thousand dollars in bitcoin 224 00:14:52,926 --> 00:14:55,927 and then, few months later it went from $1,000 to $2,000. 225 00:14:55,929 --> 00:14:59,564 I was like, "wow, I made 100% of my return." 226 00:15:01,101 --> 00:15:05,203 So bitcoin, the software is just an open source software, 227 00:15:05,205 --> 00:15:08,573 anyone can copy it and twiddle it a bit and they've got a new coin. 228 00:15:12,579 --> 00:15:17,949 [Taylor] The bubble of 2017, that bubble was people pretty much just 229 00:15:17,951 --> 00:15:20,218 trading between the different crypto currencies 230 00:15:20,220 --> 00:15:22,287 and making a lot of money doing it. 231 00:15:22,989 --> 00:15:25,290 Like a lot of money doing it. 232 00:15:25,292 --> 00:15:27,825 ♪ Bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪ 233 00:15:27,827 --> 00:15:29,961 ♪ got me investing in each of them ♪ 234 00:15:29,963 --> 00:15:32,230 ♪ bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪ 235 00:15:32,232 --> 00:15:34,766 ♪ I've got that crypto making me millions ♪ 236 00:15:34,768 --> 00:15:37,969 I turned $350 into $12,000. 237 00:15:37,971 --> 00:15:40,171 [Reporter] He became a millionaire at 24. 238 00:15:43,076 --> 00:15:44,876 You absolutely can make a lot of money. 239 00:15:44,878 --> 00:15:48,112 The dizzying ascent continued today. 240 00:15:48,114 --> 00:15:52,884 It hit a peak in December, mid-December where it was nearly $20,000. 241 00:15:52,886 --> 00:15:55,119 ♪ Bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪ 242 00:15:55,121 --> 00:15:59,857 In 2017, about over a billion dollars 243 00:15:59,859 --> 00:16:02,327 in transactions went through the exchange. 244 00:16:03,897 --> 00:16:07,165 There's so much money coming on to quadriga now. 245 00:16:07,167 --> 00:16:11,970 All of a sudden he's got this windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars. 246 00:16:15,608 --> 00:16:20,712 The other key player is Jennifer robertson. 247 00:16:20,714 --> 00:16:25,616 That is Gerald cotten's girlfriend, ultimately, his wife. 248 00:16:25,618 --> 00:16:30,989 I knew that he was engaged, but he was very private and very quiet about that. 249 00:16:30,991 --> 00:16:32,957 People who thought that they knew him quite well 250 00:16:32,959 --> 00:16:36,794 said that she sort of came out of the woodwork. They didn't know who she was. 251 00:16:36,796 --> 00:16:37,829 We know that she changed her name, 252 00:16:37,831 --> 00:16:40,698 which makes her quite mysterious. 253 00:16:40,700 --> 00:16:44,969 She was Jennifer Griffith and now she's Jennifer robertson. 254 00:16:44,971 --> 00:16:47,438 There were also these rumors. 255 00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:51,342 At one time she seems to have used the name Jennifer forgeron. 256 00:16:52,679 --> 00:16:54,545 She didn't become Jennifer cotten. 257 00:17:47,967 --> 00:17:53,938 We know very little about Gerald's wife. Very, very little. 258 00:17:53,940 --> 00:17:57,241 We do know that Gerald was living a very lavish lifestyle, 259 00:17:57,243 --> 00:17:59,010 which included a lot of travel, 260 00:17:59,012 --> 00:18:01,446 the purchasing of at least one plane... 261 00:18:02,816 --> 00:18:05,483 Jen and Gerry lived a life of luxury. 262 00:18:06,853 --> 00:18:09,987 He had this 51 foot sailboat. 263 00:18:11,558 --> 00:18:14,459 We know that they had all of these properties together. 264 00:18:15,662 --> 00:18:17,695 All of these wonderful vacations, 265 00:18:17,697 --> 00:18:21,032 staying in these fancy looking hotels. 266 00:18:23,870 --> 00:18:26,971 Mostly when we corresponded it was electronically, 267 00:18:26,973 --> 00:18:29,307 and he was usually traveling somewhere. 268 00:18:30,643 --> 00:18:33,111 So I just got the sense that he was travelling 269 00:18:33,113 --> 00:18:36,781 and enjoying the "work from wherever you are" mentality. 270 00:18:36,783 --> 00:18:39,050 But definitely there were also problems there. 271 00:18:39,052 --> 00:18:42,019 It's late 2017, early 2018... 272 00:18:42,021 --> 00:18:43,721 And the price of bitcoin now is falling. 273 00:18:43,723 --> 00:18:46,524 The cryptocurrency has gone from hitting 274 00:18:46,526 --> 00:18:50,294 a new record price yesterday to nose diving today. 275 00:18:54,467 --> 00:18:56,134 [Amy] You know, there's a lot of trades on the exchange. 276 00:18:56,136 --> 00:18:59,003 The platform can't keep up with the business. 277 00:19:08,915 --> 00:19:12,016 And then they start to run into some real problems. 278 00:19:12,785 --> 00:19:13,918 [Alexandra] There is this theory 279 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:15,553 that the company's financial troubles 280 00:19:15,555 --> 00:19:17,955 started with this ethereum incident. 281 00:19:17,957 --> 00:19:20,858 In 2017, the company came out and said 282 00:19:20,860 --> 00:19:22,994 there was some sort of technical glitch 283 00:19:22,996 --> 00:19:25,196 that caused them to lose a bunch of ether. 284 00:19:28,101 --> 00:19:31,068 [Ryan] So this money was effectively sent into a black hole. 285 00:19:31,070 --> 00:19:33,738 You know, it went undetected for a very long time. 286 00:19:33,740 --> 00:19:35,540 [Taylor] I was part of a Skype group 287 00:19:35,542 --> 00:19:38,943 that when the quadriga team discovered 288 00:19:38,945 --> 00:19:41,946 they accidentally locked up $14 million on the ether blockchain, 289 00:19:41,948 --> 00:19:43,714 that Skype group is sort of where they posted it 290 00:19:43,716 --> 00:19:45,115 to try to figure out what was going on. 291 00:19:45,117 --> 00:19:48,719 And so this ether just sits in this contract to this day. 292 00:19:48,721 --> 00:19:51,923 - No one can access it. - It's just like a, it's like a contract bug. 293 00:19:51,925 --> 00:19:56,027 Yeah, it was just the contract was not, it was not a smart contract. 294 00:19:58,565 --> 00:20:00,231 There's no way that you could recover for this 295 00:20:00,233 --> 00:20:03,000 unless you expected the price of ether 296 00:20:03,002 --> 00:20:06,037 to go 4x in two months, which nobody did. 297 00:20:08,675 --> 00:20:10,775 [Amy] So, they lose 14 million. 298 00:20:10,777 --> 00:20:14,545 The bigger problem is that cibc, which is a big bank in Canada, 299 00:20:14,547 --> 00:20:17,949 they essentially freeze about $25 million. 300 00:20:17,951 --> 00:20:20,117 [Alexandra] It's not uncommon in the crypto world 301 00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:22,053 for crypto companies to have issues getting banking. 302 00:20:22,055 --> 00:20:24,055 The banks are concerned about money laundering, 303 00:20:24,057 --> 00:20:25,790 they don't necessarily understand blockchain, 304 00:20:25,792 --> 00:20:27,925 they don't know how to trace transactions. 305 00:20:27,927 --> 00:20:29,527 We've all heard of the issues where banks 306 00:20:29,529 --> 00:20:30,895 are closing down banks accounts 307 00:20:30,897 --> 00:20:33,998 for different bitcoin exchanges. It's a huge mess. 308 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:36,968 [Amy] So quadriga can't get any type of banking. 309 00:20:36,970 --> 00:20:39,904 If you would send money to quadriga, 310 00:20:39,906 --> 00:20:43,574 you would send it to one of their third party payment processors. 311 00:20:45,044 --> 00:20:46,744 So what a third party payment processor is, 312 00:20:46,746 --> 00:20:48,546 essentially it's like a shell company. 313 00:20:54,887 --> 00:20:57,455 And those sort of funnel money 314 00:20:57,457 --> 00:21:00,091 through this web of accounts or shell companies. 315 00:21:00,093 --> 00:21:06,030 The cibc funds, they're frozen 'cause they didn't know the source of the accounts. 316 00:21:06,032 --> 00:21:08,566 [Andrew] It was very annoying for customers. 317 00:21:08,568 --> 00:21:11,135 They'd be like, "hey, give quadriga back their money, jerk. 318 00:21:11,137 --> 00:21:14,038 I'm trying to withdraw my money, stupid bank." 319 00:21:15,008 --> 00:21:17,475 [Amber] I did see the complaints escalating. 320 00:21:19,078 --> 00:21:22,046 Because businesses in the cryptocurrency world 321 00:21:22,048 --> 00:21:24,048 have trouble maintaining a bank account, 322 00:21:24,050 --> 00:21:27,084 the idea that, okay, so your transaction might be delayed, 323 00:21:27,086 --> 00:21:30,221 your withdrawal might be delayed, is not that unusual. 324 00:21:30,223 --> 00:21:32,089 [Tong] They posted Facebook updates every day. 325 00:21:32,091 --> 00:21:33,758 Almost every day during this time 326 00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:35,626 and even on Reddit people were always saying, 327 00:21:35,628 --> 00:21:37,895 "oh, people always got their money." 328 00:21:37,897 --> 00:21:40,064 It just took a while, but no one ever, you know, 329 00:21:40,066 --> 00:21:42,533 didn't receive their money at that time. 330 00:21:42,535 --> 00:21:46,170 This is October 2018. So I believed them. 331 00:21:48,141 --> 00:21:51,475 [Amy] January 14th, 2019. 332 00:21:56,482 --> 00:21:59,283 I remember that morning quite clearly. 333 00:22:09,862 --> 00:22:14,265 There was this notice from quadriga that Gerald cotten died suddenly. 334 00:22:35,188 --> 00:22:36,954 [Amber] I was really shocked. 335 00:22:37,323 --> 00:22:38,522 I was really sad. 336 00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:42,493 I really liked him. 337 00:22:45,832 --> 00:22:48,032 [Nathan] I'd seen the headlines. 338 00:22:48,034 --> 00:22:50,801 Reddit was going crazy, there were questions all over 339 00:22:50,803 --> 00:22:52,203 and we didn't really know anything at that point. 340 00:22:52,205 --> 00:22:55,072 We knew that he had been in India. 341 00:22:55,975 --> 00:22:57,308 [Amy] They had apparently gone to India 342 00:22:57,310 --> 00:23:00,344 because, to celebrate their honeymoon, right? 343 00:23:00,346 --> 00:23:01,779 And to open this orphanage. 344 00:23:01,781 --> 00:23:03,080 [Alexandra] After talking to people, 345 00:23:03,082 --> 00:23:06,050 we discovered that he had had digestive issues 346 00:23:06,052 --> 00:23:08,719 and specifically crohn's for some time. 347 00:23:08,721 --> 00:23:11,188 It's kind of rare these days for people to die of crohn's. 348 00:23:11,190 --> 00:23:13,657 He has this horrible episode that starts 349 00:23:13,659 --> 00:23:15,626 with what just looks like traveler's diarrhea 350 00:23:15,628 --> 00:23:19,029 and then ends in three cardiac arrests and his death. 351 00:23:21,868 --> 00:23:28,105 And apparently the only person by his side continuously until Gerry died was Jennifer. 352 00:23:28,107 --> 00:23:33,110 [Amy] Rather than letting people know right away that Gerald cotten had died, 353 00:23:33,112 --> 00:23:35,112 she withheld that information. 354 00:23:37,550 --> 00:23:39,917 They've been operating for a full month after he died. 355 00:23:39,919 --> 00:23:42,086 Yeah, it doesn't... It doesn't make a lot of sense, right? 356 00:23:42,088 --> 00:23:45,022 Like how do you... How do you square that? 357 00:23:45,024 --> 00:23:46,724 [Amy] It sort of brings up the question, 358 00:23:46,726 --> 00:23:49,727 what role did Jennifer robertson play in all this, you know? 359 00:23:49,729 --> 00:23:53,531 I mean there's just question after question after question. 360 00:23:53,533 --> 00:23:56,066 [Amy] Jennifer robertson then became at that point 361 00:23:56,068 --> 00:23:59,136 the largest shareholder in quadriga. 362 00:24:15,221 --> 00:24:19,390 So then the sort of panic about withdrawals escalates. 363 00:24:19,992 --> 00:24:23,194 They put in limits. $50,000 per month. 364 00:24:23,196 --> 00:24:25,563 People were trying to get their money out but they couldn't. 365 00:24:26,766 --> 00:24:29,934 It was obvious things were really bad. 366 00:24:29,936 --> 00:24:32,069 [Alexandra] Suddenly the site goes down. 367 00:24:38,544 --> 00:24:42,213 My stomach turned. I knew what it meant. 368 00:24:42,215 --> 00:24:44,148 No one ever sees that in the exchange site 369 00:24:44,150 --> 00:24:46,817 and doesn't think, "is all my money gone?" 370 00:24:46,819 --> 00:24:49,720 [Amy] That was quite a big red flag. 371 00:24:49,722 --> 00:24:52,356 [Tong] I never stopped seeing red for months now. 372 00:24:54,227 --> 00:24:56,927 And then I believe it was a day or two after that 373 00:24:56,929 --> 00:24:58,529 there was a notice on the website 374 00:24:58,531 --> 00:25:03,200 that says quadriga has filed for creditor protection. 375 00:25:03,202 --> 00:25:07,238 My co-writer Joe castaldo got the filing from the courthouse, 376 00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:11,575 and he says, "oh, my god! There's $180 million of crypto 377 00:25:11,577 --> 00:25:15,913 that seems to be missing and there's $250 million total 378 00:25:15,915 --> 00:25:18,782 that is owed to people and they can't get any of it." 379 00:25:18,784 --> 00:25:21,452 And at that point we knew we had 380 00:25:21,454 --> 00:25:23,454 a pretty big story on our hands. 381 00:25:31,197 --> 00:25:34,698 [Amy] That moment when that notice appeared on the quadriga website, 382 00:25:34,700 --> 00:25:38,369 that was, that was sort of like, "wow." 383 00:25:42,108 --> 00:25:45,075 This is when people really realized what happened. 384 00:25:45,177 --> 00:25:47,945 [Ryan] Panic. Worry. 385 00:25:47,947 --> 00:25:51,749 Yeah, just a cocktail of, uh, negative emotions. 386 00:25:51,751 --> 00:25:56,020 Yeah, I just went like, "wow, this really happened to me. Unbelievable." 387 00:26:01,060 --> 00:26:04,094 [Alexandra] We were pulling 18-hour days. 388 00:26:04,096 --> 00:26:06,363 I would go to sleep thinking about quadriga, 389 00:26:06,365 --> 00:26:09,833 and I would wake up thinking about quadriga. 390 00:26:09,835 --> 00:26:14,905 First we started with the actual contents of the filings, ccaa filing. 391 00:26:14,907 --> 00:26:16,941 'Cause there was a lot of information in there. 392 00:26:16,943 --> 00:26:18,842 You know, all the affidavits were in there 393 00:26:18,844 --> 00:26:22,446 of, you know, Jen talking about how the business was being run. 394 00:26:23,616 --> 00:26:25,149 She said that she was not really... 395 00:26:25,151 --> 00:26:27,685 That she was not at all involved in the company operations. 396 00:26:27,687 --> 00:26:31,655 But we do know that Jennifer had a quadriga e-mail address. 397 00:26:31,657 --> 00:26:35,726 We know that Jennifer ran a company called robertson nova 398 00:26:35,728 --> 00:26:39,496 that was processing payments on behalf of quadriga. 399 00:26:43,836 --> 00:26:45,869 [Joe] I remember reading the court filings 400 00:26:45,871 --> 00:26:49,340 like it was clear that quadriga was barely a real company. 401 00:26:49,342 --> 00:26:52,943 It was just Gerry with his computer. 402 00:26:52,945 --> 00:26:56,780 [Amber] He was the sole director, so this is one person, 403 00:26:56,782 --> 00:26:58,882 one young man who had access 404 00:26:58,884 --> 00:27:02,953 to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of funds. 405 00:27:04,090 --> 00:27:06,690 It really seems that Gerry had kept 406 00:27:06,692 --> 00:27:08,859 the other employees in the dark. 407 00:27:08,861 --> 00:27:11,095 There was only seven contractors, I believe. 408 00:27:11,097 --> 00:27:13,063 There were some chat logs that were leaked 409 00:27:13,065 --> 00:27:16,934 by Aaron Matthews with the contractors. 410 00:27:18,771 --> 00:27:20,170 [Alexandra] According to these chat logs, 411 00:27:20,172 --> 00:27:23,540 Gerry, he basically just took over running the company himself. 412 00:27:26,145 --> 00:27:27,811 [Mitch] If you wanted to withdraw, 413 00:27:27,813 --> 00:27:29,813 Aaron would send a request to Gerry 414 00:27:29,815 --> 00:27:32,149 and then Gerry would honor that request manually. 415 00:27:32,151 --> 00:27:35,019 He was the only one that actually controlled 416 00:27:35,021 --> 00:27:37,187 like the crypto, the cold wallets. 417 00:27:38,124 --> 00:27:39,923 Your cold wallet, that'd be your bank vault 418 00:27:39,925 --> 00:27:42,960 that has 100 million bucks in it. 419 00:27:42,962 --> 00:27:47,798 And then the hot wallet would be like the teller who has like 10 grand cash. 420 00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:52,136 So if you Rob the teller, you're not getting all that's in the bank vault. 421 00:27:52,138 --> 00:27:55,305 If you lose the keys of the bank vault, you've lost the gold bars. 422 00:27:55,808 --> 00:27:56,873 This is exactly how it works. 423 00:27:56,875 --> 00:28:00,611 If you lose that key, your coin's gone. 424 00:28:00,613 --> 00:28:05,616 [Mitch] It's not normal for an exchange owner to be the only key holder. 425 00:28:05,618 --> 00:28:09,787 I was very surprised to read about the keys. 426 00:28:09,789 --> 00:28:16,560 So the idea that no one else had access to any backups in any meaningful way. 427 00:28:16,562 --> 00:28:20,864 He was so diligent, and he was so paranoid in so many ways 428 00:28:20,866 --> 00:28:23,333 that there would've been something somewhere. 429 00:28:27,006 --> 00:28:29,873 He paid lip service to having cold wallets 430 00:28:29,875 --> 00:28:33,911 spread in different, uh, safety deposit boxes. 431 00:28:33,913 --> 00:28:36,113 [Gerald] We're obviously holding a bunch of bitcoin. 432 00:28:36,115 --> 00:28:38,916 So what we do is we actually store them offline 433 00:28:38,918 --> 00:28:42,720 in paper wallets in our bank vault, in a deposit box, 434 00:28:42,722 --> 00:28:45,389 because that's the best way to keep the coin secure. 435 00:28:47,059 --> 00:28:49,159 [Ryan] And Gerald makes reference 436 00:28:49,161 --> 00:28:53,931 to a safe that he had bolted to the rafters of his attic. 437 00:28:53,933 --> 00:28:56,900 When the safe was investigated, 438 00:28:56,902 --> 00:29:00,070 all that was found were four, four holes. 439 00:29:02,241 --> 00:29:04,208 So where's the safe? 440 00:29:07,580 --> 00:29:08,979 How the hell can you be in this space 441 00:29:08,981 --> 00:29:10,748 and be controlling so much money 442 00:29:10,750 --> 00:29:14,051 and not have any sort of backup plan. 443 00:29:14,787 --> 00:29:18,422 Was there a contingency plan that failed? 444 00:29:18,424 --> 00:29:24,561 Was there perhaps some plan such as a dead man switch, for example? 445 00:29:24,563 --> 00:29:30,000 [Ryan] Dead man switch is a mechanism a coder could set up. 446 00:29:30,002 --> 00:29:33,270 [Mitch] Say, if Gerry didn't put a password in for 30 days, 447 00:29:33,272 --> 00:29:34,705 then, you know, his private keys 448 00:29:34,707 --> 00:29:37,975 would be sent to someone who can take care of it. 449 00:29:37,977 --> 00:29:41,478 And if there was no plan, why was there no plan? Was it hubris? 450 00:29:44,984 --> 00:29:46,750 Was that Gerry thinking that he was invincible? 451 00:29:46,752 --> 00:29:48,819 That nothing could happen to him? 452 00:29:48,821 --> 00:29:52,089 Was it because Gerry didn't feel like he could trust anyone? 453 00:30:01,267 --> 00:30:06,103 What happened, Gerry? Where's the money? 454 00:30:12,678 --> 00:30:14,178 I certainly have a lot of empathy 455 00:30:14,180 --> 00:30:17,514 for people who lost money in quadriga. 456 00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,503 [Tong] Actually, I think this is, uh, we can do a left turn here. 457 00:30:41,974 --> 00:30:45,976 It was just the shock of how could my timing be this bad? 458 00:30:45,978 --> 00:30:48,946 If I had sold my house any time else 459 00:30:48,948 --> 00:30:51,014 this wouldn't have happened to me. 460 00:30:51,016 --> 00:30:55,152 Yeah, I pretty much ended up, uh, losing my life's savings because of it. 461 00:30:55,821 --> 00:30:59,723 I lost about $400,000 in quadrigacx, right? 462 00:30:59,725 --> 00:31:03,961 So I posted this video, it's a very candid video because I was very frustrated. 463 00:31:03,963 --> 00:31:07,898 As humans often do we get greedy and we get selfish 464 00:31:07,900 --> 00:31:10,033 and I was jealous of my friends for making so much money, 465 00:31:10,035 --> 00:31:13,070 so, um, I kinda took a big risk. 466 00:31:13,072 --> 00:31:17,608 I actually took out three loans from the bank and I put it all in crypto, 467 00:31:17,610 --> 00:31:20,210 which as you know, um, crypto crashed. 468 00:31:24,149 --> 00:31:26,450 And I put myself into an even deeper hole. 469 00:31:28,254 --> 00:31:31,121 And the only way for me to dig myself 470 00:31:31,123 --> 00:31:33,323 out of that hole is to sell my apartment. 471 00:31:33,626 --> 00:31:35,091 So that's what I did. 472 00:31:35,093 --> 00:31:38,362 Yeah, my apartment's pretty much right at the end of this street. 473 00:31:43,903 --> 00:31:46,503 I was in the west one, which is this one right here. 474 00:31:46,505 --> 00:31:48,138 Fifth floor. 475 00:31:50,009 --> 00:31:53,010 I sold it at the time when I also wanted to move back to Canada. 476 00:31:53,012 --> 00:31:55,779 I wanted to quit my job, but it's what came after, 477 00:31:55,781 --> 00:31:58,415 you know, that would kind of really shook me. 478 00:32:05,658 --> 00:32:07,024 I was looking for an alternate way 479 00:32:07,026 --> 00:32:08,825 to move my money from us to Canada 480 00:32:08,827 --> 00:32:10,527 and why didn't I go through the bank? 481 00:32:10,529 --> 00:32:13,297 Well, the banks usually charges a 1 or 2% commission, 482 00:32:13,299 --> 00:32:17,234 but quadrigacx had a 10% premium at the time. 483 00:32:18,237 --> 00:32:21,571 [Announcer] Be sure to visit quadrigacx.Com. 484 00:32:21,573 --> 00:32:23,874 Canada's best bitcoin exchange. 485 00:32:23,876 --> 00:32:26,743 This is what I thought cryptocurrency was invented to do 486 00:32:26,745 --> 00:32:29,813 as to easily move money between, um, different places, right? 487 00:32:29,815 --> 00:32:31,782 [Announcer] Global withdraw options 488 00:32:31,784 --> 00:32:36,086 including direct payments to any visa card worldwide. 489 00:32:36,088 --> 00:32:39,790 Quadriga definitely knew how to pull people in. 490 00:32:39,792 --> 00:32:41,959 [Announcer] You'll never have trouble moving funds 491 00:32:41,961 --> 00:32:45,062 into and out of your quadrigacx account. 492 00:32:45,064 --> 00:32:47,564 Canada's best bitcoin exchange. 493 00:32:57,042 --> 00:33:00,010 I was in... I was really depressed, right? 494 00:33:02,281 --> 00:33:05,048 I was basically gambling with my money. 495 00:33:06,952 --> 00:33:09,720 [Amber] The only investment advice that I ever give anyone 496 00:33:09,722 --> 00:33:12,189 when it comes to bitcoin, cryptocurrency, 497 00:33:12,191 --> 00:33:14,057 anything that's really high risk 498 00:33:14,059 --> 00:33:15,859 is think about all of your money. 499 00:33:15,861 --> 00:33:18,829 Picture it just catching fire and burning slowly 500 00:33:18,831 --> 00:33:21,865 and at the point where you start to cry 501 00:33:21,867 --> 00:33:23,800 make sure that you're putting less than that 502 00:33:23,802 --> 00:33:26,103 into something that's super high risk. 503 00:33:32,845 --> 00:33:34,578 [Andrew] The most important thing all viewers, 504 00:33:34,580 --> 00:33:36,013 anyone watching this has to know, 505 00:33:36,015 --> 00:33:39,316 is note your keys, note your coins, 506 00:33:39,318 --> 00:33:41,918 never leave all your money on the exchange. 507 00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,154 Where people run into danger is where they try 508 00:33:44,156 --> 00:33:47,958 and turn their bitcoins into more bitcoins by using their bitcoins. 509 00:33:56,101 --> 00:33:57,701 [Ryan] Having a background on computer science 510 00:33:57,703 --> 00:34:01,004 I was able to appreciate crypto. 511 00:34:01,006 --> 00:34:05,008 I was fortunate enough to discover it very early on. 512 00:34:06,745 --> 00:34:11,048 I had stored much of my wealth in bitcoin. 513 00:34:12,084 --> 00:34:16,953 I wanted to take the fortune I had generated, 514 00:34:16,955 --> 00:34:20,257 diversify it and move on to other things. 515 00:34:20,259 --> 00:34:25,028 Because quadriga was the biggest exchange in Canada 516 00:34:25,030 --> 00:34:30,000 and because the amount that I was dealing with had grown quite large 517 00:34:30,002 --> 00:34:32,669 the only logical place to pull it out 518 00:34:32,671 --> 00:34:35,605 of the ecosystem was through quadriga. 519 00:34:35,607 --> 00:34:37,040 [Reporter] More than 100 thousand people 520 00:34:37,042 --> 00:34:39,009 found their money appeared to have vanished 521 00:34:39,011 --> 00:34:42,012 and experts are skeptical people will ever see 522 00:34:42,014 --> 00:34:44,114 a fraction of what they're owed. 523 00:34:44,116 --> 00:34:46,349 It's difficult to let it go. 524 00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:49,820 And maybe even it shouldn't be let go 525 00:34:49,822 --> 00:34:52,155 until we do have clear answers 526 00:34:52,157 --> 00:34:55,258 regarding whether or not there's money still out there. 527 00:34:57,663 --> 00:35:02,666 I, uh, tried to rally people on Reddit. 528 00:35:02,668 --> 00:35:05,168 You know, it wasn't long after that we had a telegram group 529 00:35:05,170 --> 00:35:07,537 with, you know, new people joining by the minute. 530 00:35:08,907 --> 00:35:12,042 [Tong] So we all kinda flocked to the telegram group. 531 00:35:12,044 --> 00:35:13,877 At the beginning we was just thinking about 532 00:35:13,879 --> 00:35:15,178 let's get ourselves some lawyers, 533 00:35:15,180 --> 00:35:17,080 try to get some of our money back 534 00:35:17,082 --> 00:35:19,382 and, uh, try to understand what's going on. 535 00:35:29,128 --> 00:35:32,329 So then Joe had the bright idea to go and track down the will. 536 00:35:34,166 --> 00:35:38,101 [Amy] In November, Gerald writes his very detailed will. 537 00:35:38,103 --> 00:35:40,971 On December 9th, he dies in India. 538 00:35:43,842 --> 00:35:46,009 The fact that he had updated this will 539 00:35:46,011 --> 00:35:50,380 just two weeks before he died, that was a real shocker. 540 00:35:50,382 --> 00:35:52,048 [Amy] And mind you, this is 2018, 541 00:35:52,050 --> 00:35:54,484 so everything's falling apart on the exchange. 542 00:35:54,486 --> 00:35:56,786 The problems with the bank, people are complaining 543 00:35:56,788 --> 00:35:59,556 that they can't get their money off the exchange. 544 00:35:59,558 --> 00:36:03,960 So, things are falling apart. He writes a very detailed will. 545 00:36:04,663 --> 00:36:08,398 It's almost like he knew that something was going to happen to him. 546 00:36:10,569 --> 00:36:14,371 The will was fascinating cause we discovered all of these assets. 547 00:36:15,707 --> 00:36:21,878 [Joe] You know, 17 properties, a yacht, a plane, a Lexus, a mini Cooper. 548 00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,649 [Amy] Jennifer robertson is the executer. When he dies mysteriously, 549 00:36:25,651 --> 00:36:29,486 she gets all the assets, right? 550 00:36:29,488 --> 00:36:31,354 [Alexandra] And to us, one of our favorites, 551 00:36:31,356 --> 00:36:35,091 was that he has these two chihuahuas named nitro and gully. 552 00:36:43,635 --> 00:36:45,135 He had left this sum of money. 553 00:36:45,137 --> 00:36:50,006 There's $100,000 trust for the care of these two chihuahuas 554 00:36:50,008 --> 00:36:52,375 in the event that Jennifer doesn't survive him. 555 00:36:55,914 --> 00:36:57,881 Nitro and gully. 556 00:36:57,883 --> 00:37:00,016 - [Joe] I think they're doing okay. - [Alexandra] I do. 557 00:37:00,018 --> 00:37:03,920 Just how, like, meticulous he was about laying out 558 00:37:03,922 --> 00:37:06,022 what was gonna happen to his assets, even his dogs, 559 00:37:06,024 --> 00:37:10,060 like, after he died and yet compare that 560 00:37:10,062 --> 00:37:13,463 to the mess that quadriga was. It was crazy. 561 00:37:16,602 --> 00:37:18,802 [Reporter] The cryptocurrency confusion is attracting 562 00:37:18,804 --> 00:37:21,538 a growing number of lawyers and accountants 563 00:37:21,540 --> 00:37:23,707 suggesting they can sort it out. 564 00:37:23,709 --> 00:37:27,677 Ernst and young were brought in to be the monitors 565 00:37:27,679 --> 00:37:32,082 on the ccaa protection, which is the stage before bankruptcy. 566 00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:43,660 [Reporter] Ernst and young, the court appointed monitor 567 00:37:43,662 --> 00:37:49,165 says it has secured a total of 11 electronic devices used by Gerald cotten, 568 00:37:49,167 --> 00:37:52,902 and is working to gain access to the assets that are still off limits. 569 00:37:52,904 --> 00:37:55,872 Plans are also underway for a forensic review. 570 00:37:55,874 --> 00:38:01,945 An effort by crypto experts to figure out how to find all those missing investments. 571 00:38:04,149 --> 00:38:06,750 [Alexandra] You've got this firm from the sort 572 00:38:06,752 --> 00:38:08,818 of traditional mainstream financial world. 573 00:38:08,820 --> 00:38:10,053 You know, they're having to wrap their minds 574 00:38:10,055 --> 00:38:11,788 around this whole new asset class. 575 00:38:11,790 --> 00:38:15,025 There's a lot of questions about where all the cash was flowing, 576 00:38:15,027 --> 00:38:17,093 and this is why Ernst and young 577 00:38:17,095 --> 00:38:20,130 clearly got the high-powered forensic accountants on it. 578 00:38:20,132 --> 00:38:22,332 Um, because they needed them. 579 00:38:23,635 --> 00:38:26,569 [Amy] The first two Ernst and young reports came out. 580 00:38:26,571 --> 00:38:30,140 There were no company bank accounts, there was no segregation of funds. 581 00:38:30,142 --> 00:38:33,043 Everything was sort of mixed in together into a giant pool. 582 00:38:33,045 --> 00:38:34,978 As the accountants go through everything, 583 00:38:34,980 --> 00:38:37,280 I mean, they had a heck of a time. 584 00:38:38,950 --> 00:38:42,585 [Alexandra] There seems to have been no accounting system. 585 00:38:42,587 --> 00:38:47,791 Maybe there is in this, you know, encrypted laptop that nobody can get access to. 586 00:38:47,793 --> 00:38:51,161 How do you get in a position where you're managing $200 million 587 00:38:51,163 --> 00:38:53,096 and you literally don't have a single, 588 00:38:53,098 --> 00:38:57,667 like, balance sheet at all? What? Like what? 589 00:38:57,669 --> 00:39:00,136 With bitcoin, it's all in the public sphere. 590 00:39:00,138 --> 00:39:02,238 Anyone can check it, anyone can verify it. 591 00:39:02,240 --> 00:39:05,909 If I say I own something, Alex can prove it, 592 00:39:05,911 --> 00:39:07,544 Anthony can prove it, anyone can prove it 593 00:39:07,546 --> 00:39:09,179 just by looking on the Internet. 594 00:39:09,181 --> 00:39:13,750 Their claim was that, was not that the money was gone, right? 595 00:39:13,752 --> 00:39:16,419 Their claim was that the private keys 596 00:39:16,421 --> 00:39:19,556 that protected the piles of money were gone. 597 00:39:19,558 --> 00:39:23,927 Which meant that there should still be piles of money somewhere on the blockchain. 598 00:39:23,929 --> 00:39:26,730 I literally just wanted to answer the question 599 00:39:26,732 --> 00:39:30,934 of how much money is in the ether wallets, 600 00:39:30,936 --> 00:39:35,171 what are the addresses and that's how it started. [Laughing] 601 00:39:35,974 --> 00:39:37,540 That's how it started. 602 00:39:37,542 --> 00:39:41,311 [Tense music playing] 603 00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:51,087 [Taylor] I'm the founder and ceo of mycrypto. 604 00:39:51,089 --> 00:39:55,225 Mycrypto is a non-custodial wallet for cryptocurrency. 605 00:39:58,029 --> 00:40:01,865 Non-custodial means that we don't hold your funds, 606 00:40:01,867 --> 00:40:05,568 but we basically allow people to interact with the blockchain, 607 00:40:05,570 --> 00:40:07,937 access their funds, send their funds around, 608 00:40:07,939 --> 00:40:09,539 but we don't actually hold them. 609 00:40:12,944 --> 00:40:15,578 So, my investigation, once again, 610 00:40:15,580 --> 00:40:19,149 did not start as like a "let me investigate quadriga." 611 00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:22,819 Basically my plan was like, you know, 612 00:40:22,821 --> 00:40:25,655 spend a couple of hours, find the addresses, 613 00:40:25,657 --> 00:40:29,259 I'll post them on Reddit and move on with my life. 614 00:40:31,797 --> 00:40:37,100 There are just so many transactions, like 700,000 transactions. 615 00:40:37,102 --> 00:40:40,570 And so one trick that I use is that 616 00:40:40,572 --> 00:40:44,574 it'll just automatically color the addresses. 617 00:40:44,576 --> 00:40:46,743 The red addresses, the one that we're analyzing, 618 00:40:46,745 --> 00:40:50,146 the blue is quadriga's 2016 address 619 00:40:50,148 --> 00:40:53,116 and then it'll change to green and then purple. 620 00:40:54,619 --> 00:40:57,086 And then you can just scroll through them, 621 00:40:57,088 --> 00:40:59,456 and you'll start to notice patterns appear. 622 00:41:01,860 --> 00:41:03,793 When I found, like, the first address 623 00:41:03,795 --> 00:41:06,963 I was like, "if I dump the whole spreadsheet," right? 624 00:41:06,965 --> 00:41:10,834 "The whole ledger. If I grab all the data and then I sort it, 625 00:41:10,836 --> 00:41:13,102 by, like, the highest to the lowest, 626 00:41:13,104 --> 00:41:15,538 I should be able to see where the money goes." 627 00:41:17,576 --> 00:41:19,542 Basically like three weeks later... 628 00:41:21,112 --> 00:41:23,480 I still didn't know where the money went. 629 00:41:25,150 --> 00:41:28,451 And then I did things like combining all the addresses 630 00:41:28,453 --> 00:41:30,353 and then sorting by the amount, 631 00:41:30,355 --> 00:41:34,224 and I did things like separating the outgoing transactions 632 00:41:34,226 --> 00:41:37,994 from the incoming ones, but at the end of the day, there's no piles of money. 633 00:41:37,996 --> 00:41:39,562 Period. 634 00:41:41,733 --> 00:41:44,868 So you can find the private keys all you want, there's still no piles of money, 635 00:41:44,870 --> 00:41:48,204 so, you know, what the hell happened? 636 00:41:50,842 --> 00:41:51,908 [Nathan] What happened to that money? 637 00:41:51,910 --> 00:41:53,710 And if it is in cryptocurrency, 638 00:41:53,712 --> 00:41:55,678 why is it proving so elusive to find? 639 00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,015 There is this paper trail, this digital ledger 640 00:41:59,017 --> 00:42:03,119 of every single transaction that anyone can access, but the identities are masked. 641 00:42:03,121 --> 00:42:05,989 So you can see the address of a bitcoin wallet 642 00:42:05,991 --> 00:42:08,024 that moved money to another bitcoin wallet, 643 00:42:08,026 --> 00:42:11,528 but you wouldn't necessarily know who controls those wallets. 644 00:42:12,864 --> 00:42:16,566 [Amy] The court appointed monitor and the ccaa process 645 00:42:17,702 --> 00:42:20,904 found six bitcoin wallets, 646 00:42:20,906 --> 00:42:25,441 um, that were all emptied out by April 2018. 647 00:42:27,946 --> 00:42:30,280 Ui did an investigation and said, "no, 648 00:42:30,282 --> 00:42:32,415 there's nothing more in the cold wallets." 649 00:42:32,918 --> 00:42:34,350 Where is it then? 650 00:42:37,956 --> 00:42:39,222 [Taylor] Everything is all bull. 651 00:42:39,224 --> 00:42:41,190 The answers are out there. 652 00:42:44,996 --> 00:42:48,231 And you start looking at the things and where the money moved, 653 00:42:48,233 --> 00:42:51,801 and the biggest money movements that we saw was expected 654 00:42:51,803 --> 00:42:54,537 which is big chunks of money moving between 655 00:42:54,539 --> 00:42:56,372 sort of these three storage accounts 656 00:42:56,374 --> 00:43:00,476 that quadriga used between, like, 2016 and 2018. 657 00:43:00,478 --> 00:43:03,446 But then you see, like, some other addresses pop up. 658 00:43:04,883 --> 00:43:08,551 So, this is one of those weird red addresses. 659 00:43:08,553 --> 00:43:11,955 It is an address that just really consistently appears 660 00:43:11,957 --> 00:43:15,024 from the very beginning of quadriga. 661 00:43:15,026 --> 00:43:18,094 There's these other accounts that money was sent to. 662 00:43:18,096 --> 00:43:21,397 Maybe all the single transactions were 100 ether. 663 00:43:21,399 --> 00:43:23,366 But there were thousands of them. 664 00:43:25,904 --> 00:43:27,570 This is insane. 665 00:43:29,140 --> 00:43:31,908 When you look at the ust sort of equivalents, 666 00:43:31,910 --> 00:43:35,278 you have this list of addresses that have received $40 million, 667 00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:39,115 $50 million, $100 million. 668 00:43:39,117 --> 00:43:42,685 And then the question is, "okay, so who owns these addresses? Right?" 669 00:43:42,687 --> 00:43:45,521 Who the hell is quadriga sending $100 million to? 670 00:43:47,926 --> 00:43:53,463 So, if we go to this specific address, it's poloniex. 671 00:43:53,999 --> 00:43:56,432 So this is a poloniex address. 672 00:43:56,434 --> 00:44:00,937 Someone sent money to their quadriga deposit address, 673 00:44:00,939 --> 00:44:04,207 and their money was then sent to a poloniex deposit address 674 00:44:04,209 --> 00:44:07,143 immediately without touching quadriga's hot wallet. 675 00:44:07,145 --> 00:44:10,079 Like, that's weird. That's not normal. 676 00:44:10,081 --> 00:44:12,682 - That's pretty crazy. - Right? 677 00:44:12,684 --> 00:44:18,721 Why would an exchange take money that customers have deposited 678 00:44:18,723 --> 00:44:22,225 and send it to another exchange? 679 00:44:25,764 --> 00:44:30,133 The absolute most legitimate reason that I could possibly think of was, like, 680 00:44:30,135 --> 00:44:34,671 that they were doing something with their own profits, you know, it's... 681 00:44:34,673 --> 00:44:36,272 Not necessarily responsible, 682 00:44:36,274 --> 00:44:41,811 but it's totally legal for a company to take their profits and, um, invest them. 683 00:44:41,813 --> 00:44:44,580 [Gerald] Arbitrage is actually one thing that I've done quite a bit of. 684 00:44:44,582 --> 00:44:45,948 [Man] But what's arbitrage? 685 00:44:45,950 --> 00:44:48,551 [Gerald] Arbitrage is basically a financial term 686 00:44:48,553 --> 00:44:50,219 where you buy something at a lower price, 687 00:44:50,221 --> 00:44:51,888 resell it at a higher price instantly, 688 00:44:51,890 --> 00:44:55,858 so you never actually have any chance of losing money. 689 00:44:55,860 --> 00:45:00,029 [Ryan] Price differences between exchanges were often quite significant. 690 00:45:00,532 --> 00:45:02,932 It's often a fraction of 1%, 691 00:45:02,934 --> 00:45:04,734 but if we're talking millions of dollars, 692 00:45:04,736 --> 00:45:06,069 then that could be a significant profit 693 00:45:06,071 --> 00:45:08,938 for the person who facilitates that trade. 694 00:45:08,940 --> 00:45:11,074 [Man] How many coins do you buy at a time like this? 695 00:45:11,076 --> 00:45:12,742 [Gerald] Oh, like hundreds or so... 696 00:45:12,744 --> 00:45:14,042 [Man] Really? 697 00:45:14,044 --> 00:45:16,079 [Gerald] Yeah, it was very profitable in November and... 698 00:45:16,081 --> 00:45:20,116 [Man] Are we hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg now? Is that what's going on? 699 00:45:20,118 --> 00:45:23,820 There's this theory out there that he lost the money 700 00:45:23,822 --> 00:45:26,289 by trying to trade his way out of debt. 701 00:45:28,727 --> 00:45:30,193 [Andrew] The beginning of Gerry's snowball 702 00:45:30,195 --> 00:45:32,762 was theory in classic loss and the banking loss. 703 00:45:32,764 --> 00:45:34,697 Started his snowball where he thinks, 704 00:45:34,699 --> 00:45:36,099 "well, I'm only 30 million in the hole. 705 00:45:36,101 --> 00:45:39,001 I bet if this gamble pays off I can recuperate, 706 00:45:39,003 --> 00:45:41,237 no one will never know what happened." 707 00:45:49,948 --> 00:45:52,381 [David] Gerry seems to have thought 708 00:45:52,383 --> 00:45:54,584 that he could trade his way out of his problems. 709 00:45:54,586 --> 00:45:56,385 This sort of trading that's gambling. 710 00:45:58,089 --> 00:46:01,023 He was just really bad at it, he lost all the money 711 00:46:01,025 --> 00:46:02,892 and it's like, "why did you do this?" 712 00:46:02,894 --> 00:46:05,461 It looks very like an overconfident idiot. 713 00:46:12,971 --> 00:46:15,738 [Taylor] I'm not convinced that he is a bumbling idiot 714 00:46:15,740 --> 00:46:20,143 because if you're operating an exchange, there is... 715 00:46:21,179 --> 00:46:25,414 Opportunity to do a whole bunch of nefarious things. 716 00:46:26,217 --> 00:46:29,185 The strongest, I guess, theory I have is, 717 00:46:29,187 --> 00:46:31,154 like, some sort of money laundering. 718 00:46:33,658 --> 00:46:35,558 [Amber] Criminals commit crimes, 719 00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,561 those crimes generate profits, they want to hide the money 720 00:46:38,563 --> 00:46:39,962 by moving it through the financial system 721 00:46:39,964 --> 00:46:42,832 and the process of hiding that money is called money laundering. 722 00:46:42,834 --> 00:46:48,237 Cryptocurrency is both very easy to trace and very hard to trace. 723 00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:51,674 [Alexandra] There could be wallets that people didn't even know about. 724 00:46:51,676 --> 00:46:54,177 Once you get to another exchange, 725 00:46:54,179 --> 00:46:58,114 then only the exchange knows what happened with those transactions. Right? 726 00:46:58,116 --> 00:46:59,849 Because they could be transferred between 727 00:46:59,851 --> 00:47:01,551 different accounts at that exchange, 728 00:47:01,553 --> 00:47:03,953 it could be converted between different currencies, 729 00:47:03,955 --> 00:47:06,055 then it could move to a different exchange 730 00:47:06,057 --> 00:47:07,089 through a different wallet address 731 00:47:07,091 --> 00:47:10,193 and at that point you sort of lose the paper trail. 732 00:47:10,195 --> 00:47:11,761 As soon as you start involving different countries, 733 00:47:11,763 --> 00:47:14,330 different currencies, it becomes much harder to trace. 734 00:47:16,401 --> 00:47:18,234 [Taylor] I went on Twitter, and I said like, 735 00:47:18,236 --> 00:47:21,704 "here's some interesting transactions or interesting patterns." 736 00:47:21,706 --> 00:47:24,674 And that's when the people that had been doing the research, 737 00:47:24,676 --> 00:47:26,843 the journalists, that's when they stared at me, like, 738 00:47:26,845 --> 00:47:29,045 "so you guys followed the money, but, like, 739 00:47:29,047 --> 00:47:31,180 here's his social background. 740 00:47:31,182 --> 00:47:34,884 Here's the business documents, here's the list of people, 741 00:47:34,886 --> 00:47:37,687 like, real life people in his life." 742 00:47:37,689 --> 00:47:40,590 And that's when I was like, "oh, shit, this is amazing." 743 00:47:40,592 --> 00:47:44,527 Like, "this is terrible. This is like the best story ever." 744 00:47:56,808 --> 00:48:01,043 [Alexandra] The Internet was filled with all these rumors about Michael patryn. 745 00:48:01,512 --> 00:48:04,347 Yeah, those rumors were very persistent. 746 00:48:07,752 --> 00:48:11,754 I know, I was very intrigued by it cause I looked up Michael patryn 747 00:48:11,756 --> 00:48:16,559 and I saw that he graduated from the university or something, 748 00:48:16,561 --> 00:48:20,863 so I just e-mailed the school to find out like, "hey, did this guy actually graduate?" 749 00:48:20,865 --> 00:48:24,934 And they said we have no record of somebody with that name. 750 00:48:27,071 --> 00:48:29,572 I was like, "okay, that's not adding up. 751 00:48:29,574 --> 00:48:32,241 There must be something more going on here." 752 00:48:33,244 --> 00:48:36,979 Been working with digital currency since about 2003. 753 00:48:38,583 --> 00:48:40,616 Everything okay? 754 00:48:40,618 --> 00:48:43,853 [Alexandra] Someone at the time had posted how he was actually 755 00:48:43,855 --> 00:48:46,756 this money launderer or that he was an identity theft. 756 00:48:46,758 --> 00:48:50,493 And that he actually went by a different name which was Omar dhanani. 757 00:48:53,598 --> 00:48:58,100 Omar dhanani is a guy who served time in prison in the United States 758 00:48:58,102 --> 00:49:01,771 for his role in an identity theft and credit card fraud ring 759 00:49:01,773 --> 00:49:03,072 called "shadow crew." 760 00:49:05,009 --> 00:49:08,911 And the service that he provided to shadow crew members 761 00:49:08,913 --> 00:49:10,513 was a money laundering service. 762 00:49:13,651 --> 00:49:17,219 So shadow crew gets busted by us authorities. 763 00:49:20,758 --> 00:49:22,591 And he was sentenced to 18 months, 764 00:49:22,593 --> 00:49:26,062 and it does look like he served close to that sentence. 765 00:49:26,531 --> 00:49:30,232 And then we've managed to obtain the booking photo 766 00:49:31,636 --> 00:49:35,938 of Omar dhanani from the passaic county sheriff's office in New Jersey 767 00:49:35,940 --> 00:49:38,441 where he was taking in on his shadow crew charges 768 00:49:38,943 --> 00:49:41,110 and we tell Michael patryn, 769 00:49:41,112 --> 00:49:43,813 "look, we have these two photos of you. 770 00:49:43,815 --> 00:49:46,549 And I mean, they're of you." [Chuckling] 771 00:49:49,887 --> 00:49:53,022 Close to 15 years had past between those two photos, 772 00:49:53,024 --> 00:49:54,991 but it's still very clearly the same person. 773 00:49:54,993 --> 00:49:56,993 He's got the same facial features. 774 00:49:56,995 --> 00:50:00,196 You can see there's some kind of, like, scar or pock Mark 775 00:50:00,198 --> 00:50:02,932 or something kind of on his forehead. 776 00:50:02,934 --> 00:50:06,002 And so he asks us to send him the photos. 777 00:50:06,004 --> 00:50:08,104 So we obliged, we sent him the photos. 778 00:50:09,140 --> 00:50:11,574 [Joe] Yeah, he told us 779 00:50:11,576 --> 00:50:14,844 "while I obviously disagree with your conclusions, 780 00:50:14,846 --> 00:50:19,181 I have to wait for counsel prior to responding more thoroughly, 781 00:50:19,183 --> 00:50:20,883 which is unlikely to happen before your deadline." 782 00:50:20,885 --> 00:50:22,385 Bye-bye. 783 00:50:25,757 --> 00:50:30,926 [David] Bloomberg went and found the, uh, actual name changes. 784 00:50:30,928 --> 00:50:32,161 [Alexandra] He went from Omar dhanani 785 00:50:32,163 --> 00:50:35,197 to Omar patryn and ultimately to Michael patryn. 786 00:50:35,199 --> 00:50:37,066 [David] So his name is Michael patryn, 787 00:50:37,068 --> 00:50:39,702 that's his legal name, but he is the same guy 788 00:50:39,704 --> 00:50:41,871 who was Omar dhanani, the convicted hacker. 789 00:50:41,873 --> 00:50:43,939 And we had even asked him, remember? 790 00:50:43,941 --> 00:50:46,942 We said, "are you Omar dhanani?" And he just said "no." 791 00:50:48,780 --> 00:50:50,579 A man of mystery, I guess. 792 00:50:50,581 --> 00:50:57,086 [Tense music playing] 793 00:51:04,195 --> 00:51:07,263 [Andrew] This is our headquarters of sorts. I can see your car from here. 794 00:51:07,265 --> 00:51:09,331 You are currently not being robbed. 795 00:51:11,969 --> 00:51:13,936 I knew Mike better than Gerry. 796 00:51:13,938 --> 00:51:16,639 Some people called him a huge tough guy. 797 00:51:16,641 --> 00:51:20,176 One time, his dog got hurt and he practically cried. 798 00:51:20,178 --> 00:51:22,645 A tiny little dog. It's kind of humorous to me. 799 00:51:22,647 --> 00:51:24,580 Like, "wow, that's gangster of you." 800 00:51:26,017 --> 00:51:29,552 I think that's probably a lot of people who do bad things. 801 00:51:29,554 --> 00:51:31,454 People are very complicated. 802 00:51:32,557 --> 00:51:36,492 Like, I heard accusations about identity theft, 803 00:51:36,494 --> 00:51:41,764 and I told them, "you have to tell me the truth, your name, what you've done." 804 00:51:41,766 --> 00:51:45,000 And he just refused to be honest with me. 805 00:51:45,002 --> 00:51:47,536 So I just said, "we can't be friends anymore." 806 00:51:49,707 --> 00:51:53,843 How do you get to a point where this individual 807 00:51:53,845 --> 00:51:56,078 who's definitely known to police in Canada 808 00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,180 is responsible for people's money? 809 00:52:03,888 --> 00:52:07,123 [Upbeat music playing] 810 00:52:07,125 --> 00:52:09,758 [Amy] Why would Michael patryn step out of the picture? 811 00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:13,462 And what was Michael patryn doing 812 00:52:13,464 --> 00:52:17,566 between 2016 when he left quadriga and 2019... 813 00:52:17,568 --> 00:52:21,403 [Amy] We know a lot more about Gerald cotten now and Michael patryn. 814 00:52:21,405 --> 00:52:23,072 We found out that they met 815 00:52:23,074 --> 00:52:26,308 long before they launched quadriga together. 816 00:52:28,946 --> 00:52:31,981 Michael patryn, he met Gerald back, way back when, 817 00:52:31,983 --> 00:52:36,585 we think he met Gerald probably on the talkgold forms in around 2003. 818 00:52:36,587 --> 00:52:39,822 This was ten years before quadriga launched. 819 00:52:39,824 --> 00:52:44,193 Talkgold forms, that was a form for promoting Ponzi schemes. 820 00:52:46,631 --> 00:52:49,965 [Tong] He was in high school and that's where he met Mike patryn. 821 00:52:49,967 --> 00:52:53,202 He's been doing this kind of schemy stuff since he was young. 822 00:52:54,372 --> 00:52:57,006 [Joe] Do you remember s&s investments when he was a teenager? 823 00:52:57,008 --> 00:52:58,474 [Alexandra] Yeah, of course. 824 00:52:58,476 --> 00:53:00,876 His first Ponzi scheme that we found. Like, 825 00:53:00,878 --> 00:53:06,482 he did lose investors' money then too and tried to return it all. 826 00:53:06,484 --> 00:53:10,853 [David] Gerry cotten he was a Ponzi schemer since he was 15. 827 00:53:10,855 --> 00:53:15,558 And he's a guy who thought, "I can get money out of people just for the asking." 828 00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:17,860 Yeah, I actually, uh, heard a sort of an anecdote 829 00:53:17,862 --> 00:53:21,730 about how he, uh, was buying candy from a confectionary, 830 00:53:21,732 --> 00:53:24,833 reselling it to kids in several countries. 831 00:53:24,835 --> 00:53:29,038 You know, you can look at that as an ambitious young entrepreneur, 832 00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:31,574 but I don't think I'd go that far. 833 00:53:43,254 --> 00:53:44,753 [Alexandra] After he's released from prison, 834 00:53:44,755 --> 00:53:47,523 we know that Omar dhanani was deported to Canada 835 00:53:47,525 --> 00:53:51,527 and then registered a company called midas gold. 836 00:53:54,765 --> 00:53:57,900 It's basically an exchanger for Liberty reserve. 837 00:53:57,902 --> 00:54:01,770 This, uh, very large black market bank. 838 00:54:01,772 --> 00:54:04,006 So he gets back into moving money again, 839 00:54:04,008 --> 00:54:05,641 cause that's what he knows best. 840 00:54:05,643 --> 00:54:10,012 There was evidence that Gerald cotten was involved in that as well. 841 00:54:17,922 --> 00:54:20,923 [Alexandra] And then Liberty reserve, of course, gets busted. 842 00:54:20,925 --> 00:54:22,291 [Amy] So that's done with. 843 00:54:22,893 --> 00:54:24,960 So what next? 844 00:54:24,962 --> 00:54:29,598 Well, suddenly, cotten and patryn appear in Vancouver 845 00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:31,800 in the bitcoin, you know, community. 846 00:54:31,802 --> 00:54:35,638 With bitcoin you basically get rid of that large corporation. 847 00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:37,940 So I was really, really fascinated with that technology. 848 00:54:37,942 --> 00:54:41,176 He talked up this sort of libertarian bitcoin angle. 849 00:54:41,178 --> 00:54:44,546 "I believe in everything you guys believe, you should trust me." 850 00:54:44,548 --> 00:54:46,749 Everyone liked them. They supported the community 851 00:54:46,751 --> 00:54:49,118 in a time when no one else really would. 852 00:54:50,921 --> 00:54:54,223 He almost never said anything in co-op meetings. 853 00:54:54,225 --> 00:54:55,958 He sat there and smiled. 854 00:54:56,127 --> 00:54:57,960 Always smiling. 855 00:55:00,931 --> 00:55:03,599 Maybe in hindsight there's a red flag 856 00:55:03,601 --> 00:55:06,335 that someone too generous is too good to be true. 857 00:55:07,972 --> 00:55:10,973 [Taylor] Money laundering and scamming people in Ponzi, 858 00:55:10,975 --> 00:55:13,208 once you realize that Gerald's been doing that... 859 00:55:14,745 --> 00:55:17,780 It's harder to say, like, you know, flip a coin 860 00:55:17,782 --> 00:55:19,748 and he could be a bumbling idiot or an evil genius. 861 00:55:19,750 --> 00:55:22,685 Like, you look at it and you just go... 862 00:55:22,687 --> 00:55:24,887 "Well, what are the chances that both these people 863 00:55:24,889 --> 00:55:26,922 literally turned over a new leaf 864 00:55:26,924 --> 00:55:30,326 six months after their last Ponzi exit scam?" 865 00:55:33,097 --> 00:55:36,465 Fifth report, that was the, um, really excoriating one. 866 00:55:36,467 --> 00:55:38,267 Yeah. [Laughing] 867 00:55:42,006 --> 00:55:43,972 [Taylor] We have found out later through Ernst and young, 868 00:55:43,974 --> 00:55:48,110 Gerald cotten was setting up fake accounts on the exchange. 869 00:55:48,112 --> 00:55:51,213 14 fake accounts, things, names like "aretwo deetwo." 870 00:55:52,016 --> 00:55:53,982 And "seethree peaohh." 871 00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,788 So if you would send money to quadriga, 872 00:55:59,790 --> 00:56:01,757 what you would see in your quadriga account 873 00:56:01,759 --> 00:56:03,926 would be not real Canadian dollars, 874 00:56:03,928 --> 00:56:05,994 but what were called quad bucks. 875 00:56:05,996 --> 00:56:07,796 [Alexandra] Quadrigacx bucks. 876 00:56:07,798 --> 00:56:09,865 This was kind of an in between currency. 877 00:56:09,867 --> 00:56:11,934 [Amy] They weren't real dollars. 878 00:56:11,936 --> 00:56:18,040 Now, the problem with that is you can make money out of nothing. 879 00:56:18,042 --> 00:56:22,845 He was funding these accounts with fake crypto, fake dollars. 880 00:56:22,847 --> 00:56:25,347 ["Dirty cash" by the adventures of Stevie v playing] 881 00:56:28,919 --> 00:56:32,087 [Amy] Bitcoin atm, they're great tools for money laundering. 882 00:56:32,089 --> 00:56:33,889 If you didn't wanna have a financial trail, 883 00:56:33,891 --> 00:56:35,591 you just go and feed that cash 884 00:56:35,593 --> 00:56:37,192 and it was hooked right up to the exchange. 885 00:56:37,194 --> 00:56:41,563 ♪ Dirty cash I want you, dirty cash I need you, ooh ♪ 886 00:56:41,565 --> 00:56:44,733 ♪ money talks, money talks ♪ 887 00:56:44,735 --> 00:56:47,069 ♪ dirty cash I want you... ♪ 888 00:56:47,071 --> 00:56:49,738 People could actually, if they withdrew money from the exchange, 889 00:56:49,740 --> 00:56:53,108 if they could go and pick up cash at a certain location. 890 00:56:54,945 --> 00:56:59,481 They'd even have boxes of cash sent to them to their door, okay? 891 00:57:00,584 --> 00:57:02,718 Shoe boxes of cash delivered. 892 00:57:02,720 --> 00:57:05,954 That's a tip off for some funny business right there. 893 00:57:08,559 --> 00:57:12,428 According to court documents that we have from Ernst and young, 894 00:57:12,430 --> 00:57:16,265 Gerald cotten would direct these third party payment processors 895 00:57:16,267 --> 00:57:21,103 or shell companies to, to funnel money directly into his bank account 896 00:57:21,105 --> 00:57:23,572 and the accounts of, of Jennifer robertson. 897 00:57:24,842 --> 00:57:27,676 ♪ Dirty cash I want you. Dirty cash... ♪ 898 00:57:27,678 --> 00:57:29,077 - Oh, that's great. - They even stole... 899 00:57:29,079 --> 00:57:33,048 The stove full of all the unpaid checks. That's just fabulous. 900 00:57:36,353 --> 00:57:40,989 There was a great photo which was from one of the, 901 00:57:40,991 --> 00:57:43,158 hearings of stove top 902 00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:46,195 with bundles of bank drafts sitting on it. 903 00:57:46,197 --> 00:57:49,198 That have been there two years uncashed. 904 00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:51,700 People were sending them money in 2017, 905 00:57:51,702 --> 00:57:54,136 they never even banked it or cashed it in any way. 906 00:57:54,138 --> 00:57:56,538 It's like, "how does that work?" 907 00:57:56,540 --> 00:57:59,441 It was some sort of money laundering chop-shop. 908 00:58:01,779 --> 00:58:03,412 We take steps to make sure that people 909 00:58:03,414 --> 00:58:05,214 aren't laundering funds through our system. 910 00:58:05,216 --> 00:58:09,418 We obviously don't wanna facilitate any sort of illicit transaction of that type. 911 00:58:10,754 --> 00:58:13,856 [David] I'm just imagining the person that Ernst and young 912 00:58:13,858 --> 00:58:15,157 are writing those monitor reports. 913 00:58:15,159 --> 00:58:17,960 They don't actually say "and everyone involved 914 00:58:17,962 --> 00:58:19,061 should go to jail immediately." 915 00:58:19,063 --> 00:58:21,029 But they totally meant it. 916 00:58:24,568 --> 00:58:26,201 So you have to have a certain intelligence 917 00:58:26,203 --> 00:58:30,239 and understanding of people and greed to be a good conman. 918 00:58:30,241 --> 00:58:33,242 It's possible that he realized sometime in 2018 919 00:58:33,244 --> 00:58:36,078 that he'd really screwed up his own con. 920 00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:38,747 At what point he started to think, 921 00:58:38,749 --> 00:58:41,984 "maybe I have to have an idea for how to step out of this." 922 00:58:42,620 --> 00:58:43,919 [David] The scam was collapsing. 923 00:58:43,921 --> 00:58:47,155 He couldn't keep it going any longer, then oops he died. 924 00:58:47,157 --> 00:58:52,027 Quite soon after he died, uh, someone came to me and said, 925 00:58:52,763 --> 00:58:55,330 "dude, he's not dead." 926 00:58:55,332 --> 00:59:00,235 [Amy] It was the time of his death that made people wonder 927 00:59:03,741 --> 00:59:08,477 was there a possibility that he had faked his death? Was this an exit scam? 928 00:59:10,047 --> 00:59:12,781 If you were going to fake a death, 929 00:59:12,783 --> 00:59:15,317 India would be a great place to do that. 930 00:59:15,319 --> 00:59:16,818 [Alex] You know, dying on his honeymoon 931 00:59:16,820 --> 00:59:18,153 while building an orphanage for children, 932 00:59:18,155 --> 00:59:19,922 this is all, like, too perfect. 933 00:59:19,924 --> 00:59:22,057 So nice that it's a red flag for me. 934 00:59:22,059 --> 00:59:23,692 [Alexandra] He's building an orphanage, okay? 935 00:59:23,694 --> 00:59:25,561 Well, maybe he's a philanthropist 936 00:59:25,563 --> 00:59:28,063 and then I kind of ran that by a couple of people 937 00:59:28,065 --> 00:59:30,899 and they said, "no, we never really knew Gerry 938 00:59:30,901 --> 00:59:32,901 to have this sort of charitable side." 939 00:59:32,903 --> 00:59:35,304 [Amy] Everything is falling apart in the exchange, 940 00:59:35,306 --> 00:59:37,873 and it was at this point where make or break. 941 00:59:37,875 --> 00:59:41,410 And we have seen exit scams in the cryptocurrency world before. 942 00:59:46,550 --> 00:59:48,850 [Mitch] And then someone came on the Reddit, qcx contractor, 943 00:59:48,852 --> 00:59:50,786 they claimed to be a contractor 944 00:59:50,788 --> 00:59:53,922 and they showed of internal screenshots of company communications. 945 00:59:53,924 --> 00:59:55,891 They're not confident he's dead. 946 00:59:55,893 --> 00:59:58,126 They're at the funeral, didn't see a body. 947 01:00:00,364 --> 01:00:02,731 [Alex] So, this is something I came up with. 948 01:00:02,733 --> 01:00:04,266 So this is a full theory. 949 01:00:04,268 --> 01:00:07,703 There is this stuff is known as Haitian zombie powder. 950 01:00:07,705 --> 01:00:11,173 So witch doctors in Haiti, what they do is they'll give you this drug 951 01:00:11,175 --> 01:00:15,243 which makes you appear dead for up to a few days until you get the cure. 952 01:00:29,426 --> 01:00:34,463 [Tense music playing] 953 01:00:49,847 --> 01:00:53,382 The conspiracy theorists on the Internet are like, "he's definitely alive." 954 01:00:53,384 --> 01:00:56,685 Like, no, everyone is like, "we don't know if he's dead. 955 01:00:56,687 --> 01:00:59,087 We don't know if he's alive. Flip a coin." 956 01:01:01,825 --> 01:01:03,225 [Nathan] The rumors were quite rampant 957 01:01:03,227 --> 01:01:04,860 that perhaps he had faked his own death. 958 01:01:04,862 --> 01:01:07,596 People have dug up old news reports 959 01:01:07,598 --> 01:01:11,133 from other parts of India with fake death rings. 960 01:01:17,007 --> 01:01:22,911 To me it wasn't so much being driven by conflicting hypothesis, 961 01:01:22,913 --> 01:01:25,714 so much as it was kind of the thrill of the chase. 962 01:01:25,716 --> 01:01:30,118 [Tense music playing] 963 01:01:35,225 --> 01:01:39,561 [Nathan] It was my assignment to go to jaipur and try to piece together 964 01:01:39,563 --> 01:01:41,430 what happened in his final hours. 965 01:01:45,836 --> 01:01:48,336 The first task was to find the death certificate. 966 01:01:48,939 --> 01:01:51,640 We hopped in an auto rickshaw 967 01:01:51,642 --> 01:01:56,044 and made it to the registrar's office, which was small. 968 01:01:57,781 --> 01:02:02,084 There were desks and shelves that were just stacked full of papers. 969 01:02:03,187 --> 01:02:04,252 And, uh, the next thing we know, 970 01:02:04,254 --> 01:02:05,887 they had pulled up the actual death certificate 971 01:02:05,889 --> 01:02:09,257 and they said, "would you like a copy?" And we said, "sure." 972 01:02:10,227 --> 01:02:12,861 And I just remember, I was working with the local journalists 973 01:02:12,863 --> 01:02:15,764 who speaks hindi, a local fixer, um, 974 01:02:15,766 --> 01:02:18,633 and just high fiving like, "wow, this is great. We got it!" 975 01:02:18,635 --> 01:02:20,302 You know? "This is happening!" 976 01:02:21,171 --> 01:02:23,271 The death certificate had his name spelled wrong. 977 01:02:23,273 --> 01:02:26,641 It was cottan with c-o-t-t-a-n. 978 01:02:26,643 --> 01:02:32,047 That death certificate came from the official computer of the registrar, 979 01:02:32,049 --> 01:02:36,017 and it confirmed the address of the deceased 980 01:02:36,019 --> 01:02:40,122 at the time of death was, uh, the oberoi rajvilas hotel, 981 01:02:40,124 --> 01:02:42,991 which is the most expensive hotel in the city. 982 01:02:45,529 --> 01:02:46,962 We got in another auto rickshaw, 983 01:02:46,964 --> 01:02:52,834 and we traipsed across the city to the oberoi rajvilas. 984 01:02:52,836 --> 01:02:56,538 This place was built sort of as a modern day palace. 985 01:02:58,575 --> 01:03:01,376 Very, very large, sort of verdant grounds. 986 01:03:02,646 --> 01:03:05,147 It's quiet, there's peacock calls. 987 01:03:07,851 --> 01:03:10,852 I'm not sure there are that many guests 988 01:03:10,854 --> 01:03:15,056 who show up at the oberoi rajvilas in, um, in auto rickshaw. 989 01:03:16,293 --> 01:03:18,026 But then eventually they let us in and then we said, 990 01:03:18,028 --> 01:03:20,095 "we'd like to speak with the general manager." 991 01:03:20,097 --> 01:03:22,831 He just said, you know, "it was very sad what had happened" 992 01:03:22,833 --> 01:03:27,068 and he didn't wanna speak about anything else. And so that was that. 993 01:03:28,806 --> 01:03:31,807 We weren't able to entirely piece together their itinerary. 994 01:03:31,809 --> 01:03:35,677 They landed in New Delhi and then they went to jaipur, 995 01:03:35,679 --> 01:03:39,347 and we did know that their next destination was hyderabad. 996 01:03:41,351 --> 01:03:43,885 They had said that they were going to open an orphanage 997 01:03:43,887 --> 01:03:46,555 and a picture had emerged on Reddit 998 01:03:46,557 --> 01:03:48,924 showing this orphanage. 999 01:03:48,926 --> 01:03:52,027 And so the question was, "is the orphanage real? 1000 01:03:52,029 --> 01:03:53,094 Does it exist?" 1001 01:03:53,096 --> 01:03:54,963 And indeed it did exist. 1002 01:03:56,066 --> 01:03:57,566 With their names on the red sign, 1003 01:03:57,568 --> 01:03:59,835 their names were inside as well. 1004 01:03:59,837 --> 01:04:02,637 Their plans were to spend two hours there 1005 01:04:02,639 --> 01:04:05,073 and turn around, uh, and leave. 1006 01:04:05,075 --> 01:04:08,076 Two hours was a relatively short amount of time 1007 01:04:08,078 --> 01:04:09,978 to, to book for something like that. 1008 01:04:09,980 --> 01:04:13,181 [Engine starting] 1009 01:04:14,318 --> 01:04:16,017 [Nathan] For me, the big question was, 1010 01:04:16,019 --> 01:04:18,420 "what happened in the hospital?" 1011 01:04:18,422 --> 01:04:20,121 We had a statement from the hospital, 1012 01:04:20,123 --> 01:04:26,027 but what we did not have was a really sort of detailed view into what had taken place. 1013 01:04:27,698 --> 01:04:31,333 And so we wanted to find the doctor. 1014 01:04:32,636 --> 01:04:38,907 Gerry cotten had frequent episodes of vomiting and watery stools. 1015 01:04:38,909 --> 01:04:40,909 Doctors said at first they thought it was just traveler's diarrhea, 1016 01:04:40,911 --> 01:04:43,245 which is very common, of course, in India. 1017 01:04:44,114 --> 01:04:46,114 He said, uh, Jennifer robertson 1018 01:04:46,116 --> 01:04:48,283 spent the night in the hospital with him 1019 01:04:48,285 --> 01:04:51,853 and in the following day he had been booked for an ultrasound. 1020 01:04:51,855 --> 01:04:53,955 As he was booked for the ultrasound 1021 01:04:53,957 --> 01:04:57,425 he started experiencing what the doctor described as restlessness 1022 01:04:58,729 --> 01:05:00,328 and a shortage of breath. 1023 01:05:02,699 --> 01:05:04,532 They were worried about a rupture 1024 01:05:04,534 --> 01:05:07,002 or something else in his intestine. 1025 01:05:07,004 --> 01:05:08,803 Things went downhill very, very quickly. 1026 01:05:08,805 --> 01:05:13,942 [Beeping] 1027 01:05:13,944 --> 01:05:16,344 [Nathan] He had a heart attack. He was revived. 1028 01:05:16,613 --> 01:05:21,917 [Beeping] 1029 01:05:21,919 --> 01:05:26,187 [Nathan] And he had another heart attack and they revived him. 1030 01:05:28,058 --> 01:05:30,558 And then he had a third heart attack, and they couldn't revive him. 1031 01:05:30,560 --> 01:05:34,562 [Beeping stops] 1032 01:05:36,099 --> 01:05:40,669 And, uh, he died within about 25 hours 1033 01:05:40,671 --> 01:05:42,871 of them touching down in jaipur. 1034 01:05:42,873 --> 01:05:48,510 He died within about 25 hours of them touching down in jaipur. 1035 01:05:49,479 --> 01:05:50,946 Dramatic. 1036 01:05:52,783 --> 01:05:57,085 When it's coming out both ends it's almost always an infection. 1037 01:05:58,722 --> 01:06:04,125 What crohn's disease is, it's when the immune system is inappropriately turned on 1038 01:06:04,127 --> 01:06:06,494 and causing damage to the bowel. 1039 01:06:07,230 --> 01:06:09,130 From the story that we heard it sounds 1040 01:06:09,132 --> 01:06:10,966 as if something catastrophic happened 1041 01:06:10,968 --> 01:06:13,168 like he had a perforation in his bowel 1042 01:06:13,170 --> 01:06:16,171 and then an acquired infection. 1043 01:06:16,173 --> 01:06:18,840 The doctor seemed quite troubled by the whole thing. 1044 01:06:18,842 --> 01:06:21,309 Uh, he said he, he made clear 1045 01:06:21,311 --> 01:06:23,611 that he'd been running through this again and again and again. 1046 01:06:23,613 --> 01:06:25,814 The doctor had come to the conclusion 1047 01:06:25,816 --> 01:06:28,350 about what was the most likely cause of death. 1048 01:06:29,419 --> 01:06:31,653 One of the things that happens with crohn's disease 1049 01:06:31,655 --> 01:06:33,588 is this possibility of a perforation 1050 01:06:33,590 --> 01:06:37,125 and that can lead very rapidly to sepsis. 1051 01:06:37,127 --> 01:06:38,994 [Brian] But now we're assuming that's what happened there. 1052 01:06:38,996 --> 01:06:40,695 He may just had a cardiac arrest. 1053 01:06:40,697 --> 01:06:44,899 It is obviously very, um, uncommon that someone, 1054 01:06:44,901 --> 01:06:49,104 um, at that age without any other cardiac 1055 01:06:49,106 --> 01:06:51,139 or respiratory problems 1056 01:06:51,141 --> 01:06:54,209 would have not survived that event. 1057 01:06:55,779 --> 01:06:58,146 But if they weren't properly resuscitated, 1058 01:06:58,148 --> 01:07:00,782 then certainly that... Something like that 1059 01:07:00,784 --> 01:07:02,417 could've led to, to one's demise. 1060 01:07:07,057 --> 01:07:08,723 [Nathan] I spoke with the police. 1061 01:07:08,725 --> 01:07:10,892 He said, "as far as I'm concerned, 1062 01:07:10,894 --> 01:07:13,661 this was a natural death. There was no autopsy." 1063 01:07:13,663 --> 01:07:15,430 Why was there no autopsy, doc? 1064 01:07:15,432 --> 01:07:19,968 You do that in a case where there are suspicions about what might've happened. 1065 01:07:19,970 --> 01:07:23,838 I actually even showed Dr. Sharma 1066 01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:27,142 pictures of Gerry cotten and said, "is this... Is this the guy?" 1067 01:07:27,144 --> 01:07:28,009 And he said, "yes." 1068 01:07:28,011 --> 01:07:29,778 And everywhere I went, 1069 01:07:29,780 --> 01:07:32,714 anyone that had a record of, of Gerry cotten 1070 01:07:32,716 --> 01:07:36,051 had photocopies of his passport as well. 1071 01:07:39,689 --> 01:07:43,224 I certainly didn't meet anyone who thought that the death was faked. 1072 01:07:44,461 --> 01:07:45,727 There was a tourist that had died and 1073 01:07:45,729 --> 01:07:48,563 at the time nobody had really asked any questions. 1074 01:07:48,565 --> 01:07:51,966 I suppose if you look at this stripped of all the questions that emerged later 1075 01:07:51,968 --> 01:07:55,937 you can look at this as just a horrifically sad 24-48 hours, 1076 01:07:55,939 --> 01:07:58,440 uh, for a newly married couple. 1077 01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:07,549 [David] Reputable journalists have spoken to the doctor and so on, 1078 01:08:07,551 --> 01:08:09,684 and think his story is good. 1079 01:08:09,686 --> 01:08:13,588 But I think it would be ridiculous not to have doubts about it. 1080 01:08:14,858 --> 01:08:16,691 We're talking about quite a lot of money. 1081 01:08:16,693 --> 01:08:21,529 There's quite enough money to bribe absolutely everybody in all the chain and 1082 01:08:21,531 --> 01:08:24,199 quadriga were not shy about blowing cash. 1083 01:08:24,201 --> 01:08:26,000 I mean, it happens really quick. 1084 01:08:26,002 --> 01:08:29,971 He gets sick on the 8th, he's dead on the 9th. 1085 01:08:30,774 --> 01:08:34,542 You know, he's on a plane back to Canada on the 10th. 1086 01:08:34,544 --> 01:08:37,178 Um, the services are on the 14th. 1087 01:08:38,014 --> 01:08:42,917 It's, uh, apparently from what we know closed casket. 1088 01:08:42,919 --> 01:08:47,388 Um, Jennifer robertson is the executer, so she makes that decision. 1089 01:08:53,029 --> 01:08:54,829 [Nathan] There were a few more questions. 1090 01:08:54,831 --> 01:08:56,931 Uh, one was what had... what had happened with the body? 1091 01:08:56,933 --> 01:08:59,367 Because it was a closed casket funeral 1092 01:08:59,369 --> 01:09:01,936 and so people were asking questions about, "was there actually a body? 1093 01:09:01,938 --> 01:09:03,103 What's happening?" 1094 01:09:03,105 --> 01:09:05,306 And so we also wanted to speak with the embalmer. 1095 01:09:07,844 --> 01:09:09,577 So we walk into this office and this woman, 1096 01:09:09,579 --> 01:09:12,180 Dr. Seynara is sitting there, 1097 01:09:12,182 --> 01:09:14,716 and we said, "hey, we're here, you know, trying to understand 1098 01:09:14,718 --> 01:09:15,917 a little bit about what happened 1099 01:09:15,919 --> 01:09:18,153 to a Canadian man who died here." She's like, "oh." 1100 01:09:18,155 --> 01:09:21,089 She's like, "yes, yes, they brought the body here 1101 01:09:21,091 --> 01:09:24,025 and I refused to embalm it." And we were like, "what?" 1102 01:09:26,563 --> 01:09:30,064 The embalmer thought that the circumstances were fishy 1103 01:09:30,066 --> 01:09:35,036 because as she recalled a representative of the hotel had come, 1104 01:09:35,038 --> 01:09:36,704 which she found very strange. 1105 01:09:36,706 --> 01:09:39,741 Normally the body would come by ambulance, 1106 01:09:39,743 --> 01:09:42,577 normally the communication would come directly from the hospital. 1107 01:09:42,579 --> 01:09:44,712 And when she asked what had happened 1108 01:09:44,714 --> 01:09:49,217 she was given only a sort of a very cursory description of what had happened. 1109 01:09:50,187 --> 01:09:51,619 She's like, "well, this is very, very strange." 1110 01:09:51,621 --> 01:09:54,189 And so she said no. 1111 01:09:54,191 --> 01:09:58,026 She suggested they take the body to the sms medical college. 1112 01:10:00,030 --> 01:10:02,363 It's a place where the police are often present 1113 01:10:02,365 --> 01:10:04,799 and so she said, "take the body there." 1114 01:10:04,801 --> 01:10:06,968 And so that's where we went next. 1115 01:10:07,971 --> 01:10:10,238 We walked in and the first thing we walk along this hall 1116 01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:12,507 and the first thing we see, we see a sign for anatomy department, 1117 01:10:12,509 --> 01:10:13,675 which is what we're looking for 1118 01:10:13,677 --> 01:10:16,911 and we see this doorway that has, uh, two skeletons, 1119 01:10:16,913 --> 01:10:19,914 both of which have what appear to be ping pong balls 1120 01:10:19,916 --> 01:10:23,551 in the eye sockets and on top of it there's a sign, 1121 01:10:23,553 --> 01:10:25,987 appears to all but made out of human bones. 1122 01:10:25,989 --> 01:10:30,091 Um... which is like, "okay, that's a little Addams family." 1123 01:10:32,896 --> 01:10:35,663 Then we wanted to see the records. 1124 01:10:35,665 --> 01:10:39,467 So they came back with just this very, kind of thin dossier 1125 01:10:40,136 --> 01:10:43,905 and it showed they had photocopies of his passport 1126 01:10:43,907 --> 01:10:46,674 and it also showed the people who had dropped off 1127 01:10:46,676 --> 01:10:49,477 and taken the body was people who worked for the hotel. 1128 01:10:51,181 --> 01:10:54,916 Where the body had been in between? I don't know. 1129 01:10:54,918 --> 01:10:57,051 I would think it would be a very strange thing 1130 01:10:57,053 --> 01:11:00,989 for a luxury hotel to bring a body onto its premises, 1131 01:11:00,991 --> 01:11:04,325 but there's not very much that's normal about this story. 1132 01:11:07,230 --> 01:11:11,933 Nobody's seen the body. So is this really Gerald? 1133 01:11:11,935 --> 01:11:13,134 Nobody really knows for sure. 1134 01:11:13,136 --> 01:11:15,336 [Ryan] I'm not convinced he faked his death, 1135 01:11:15,338 --> 01:11:17,839 but I'm also not convinced that he's dead. 1136 01:11:17,841 --> 01:11:21,476 I'm 80% sure that he's dead. 1137 01:11:23,079 --> 01:11:25,079 75% sure. 1138 01:11:25,081 --> 01:11:27,048 You know, people just don't believe that he's dead. 1139 01:11:27,050 --> 01:11:29,150 They wanna see a picture, they want DNA. 1140 01:11:29,152 --> 01:11:32,320 Lawyers want the rcmp to exhume the body 1141 01:11:32,322 --> 01:11:34,922 of quadrigacx founder Gerald cotten. 1142 01:11:34,924 --> 01:11:38,960 [Amy] The now 76,000 creditors are pushing 1143 01:11:38,962 --> 01:11:43,665 the royal Canadian mounted police to dig up Gerald's body 1144 01:11:43,667 --> 01:11:46,968 soon because it's already been in the ground for over a year. 1145 01:11:48,972 --> 01:11:50,738 [David] If it isn't Gerry, then 1146 01:11:50,740 --> 01:11:53,541 it's obvious disappear and fake your death 1147 01:11:53,543 --> 01:11:57,879 and if it is Gerry, then we have to ask could he have been attacked? 1148 01:11:57,881 --> 01:11:59,480 Murdered? Poisoned? 1149 01:11:59,482 --> 01:12:02,150 I'm here with the crew of the deadliest catch. 1150 01:12:02,152 --> 01:12:05,453 It's pretty stormy out here and the wind is really picking up. 1151 01:12:07,824 --> 01:12:09,991 Gerry was definitely very paranoid 1152 01:12:09,993 --> 01:12:12,026 as the public face of an exchange. 1153 01:12:12,028 --> 01:12:14,228 He spoke at a couple of conferences, 1154 01:12:14,230 --> 01:12:16,564 and he seemed very paranoid about getting kidnapped. 1155 01:12:17,634 --> 01:12:18,999 I better get inside. 1156 01:12:19,135 --> 01:12:21,969 The captain's orders and he said that it's just too rough out, 1157 01:12:21,971 --> 01:12:23,571 I could fall overboard. 1158 01:12:25,208 --> 01:12:27,608 [David] This is a massive, massive scheme 1159 01:12:27,610 --> 01:12:30,211 that came unraveled and you have to think, 1160 01:12:30,213 --> 01:12:33,948 how much money would it take to kill Gerry cotten? 1161 01:12:34,517 --> 01:12:36,517 Would $200 million be enough? 1162 01:12:38,722 --> 01:12:41,422 I think Gerry is the only one with the whole story. 1163 01:12:46,763 --> 01:12:49,130 [Amy] There's so many open questions, you know? 1164 01:12:49,132 --> 01:12:55,570 It's just a beautiful example of the rampant fraud and scams in the industry. 1165 01:12:57,207 --> 01:12:59,040 [Alexandra] People are still convinced that, 1166 01:12:59,042 --> 01:13:00,641 you know, they took the money and ran. 1167 01:13:00,643 --> 01:13:02,977 But I feel like after that osc report came out 1168 01:13:02,979 --> 01:13:08,049 it's pretty clear that the money had already been long spent. It's gone. 1169 01:13:16,693 --> 01:13:19,761 [Joe] My theory is they kind of stumbled into a real business 1170 01:13:19,763 --> 01:13:22,530 because it coincided with the bitcoin boom 1171 01:13:22,532 --> 01:13:24,599 and they had a functioning exchange on their hands, 1172 01:13:24,601 --> 01:13:29,270 but in the end Gerry treated it like one of his old scams. 1173 01:13:29,272 --> 01:13:33,040 [Alexandra] If you could interview any one person, who would it be? 1174 01:13:33,176 --> 01:13:35,576 Probably Jen. 1175 01:13:37,013 --> 01:13:38,880 [David] What little they've recovered 1176 01:13:38,882 --> 01:13:40,982 plus all of Jennifer robertson's 1177 01:13:40,984 --> 01:13:43,951 quadriga boats, houses and so forth 1178 01:13:43,953 --> 01:13:47,422 will be sold and redistributed to the creditors 1179 01:13:47,424 --> 01:13:49,190 and they'll get cents on the dollar. 1180 01:13:49,192 --> 01:13:53,361 To find out that your husband wasn't who you thought he was the whole time, 1181 01:13:53,930 --> 01:13:56,164 I mean, she gave everything back, so... 1182 01:13:56,166 --> 01:13:58,599 I think the only thing she kept was her wedding ring. 1183 01:13:58,601 --> 01:14:01,068 Yeah. It's sad. 1184 01:14:01,070 --> 01:14:04,539 [Amy] We know that the whole thing was a fraud. Who else was involved? 1185 01:14:04,541 --> 01:14:07,575 2016, when patryn steps out of the picture, 1186 01:14:07,577 --> 01:14:10,044 did patryn step out of the picture? 1187 01:14:10,046 --> 01:14:12,980 Did they talk about the exit scam with patryn? 1188 01:14:14,184 --> 01:14:16,984 How much he's involved in it? We don't know. 1189 01:14:51,754 --> 01:14:55,957 I don't buy the story that the money is gone. 1190 01:14:55,959 --> 01:15:00,695 There's somewhere around $100 million that's just unaccounted for. 1191 01:15:00,697 --> 01:15:02,463 Just, you know, sent in directions 1192 01:15:02,465 --> 01:15:06,133 that are difficult to continue following. 1193 01:15:09,439 --> 01:15:14,175 I, uh, I think that someone still breathing, um, has control over it 1194 01:15:14,177 --> 01:15:17,879 and so long as that person continues to breathe 1195 01:15:17,881 --> 01:15:20,281 there's a chance that they make mistakes. 1196 01:15:22,752 --> 01:15:25,219 [Taylor] If all of the clues that are on the Internet, 1197 01:15:25,221 --> 01:15:27,889 if all the insights come from the Internet, 1198 01:15:27,891 --> 01:15:30,157 then the person that's mostly left to solve it 1199 01:15:30,159 --> 01:15:35,129 is someone who really, deeply understands the Internet. 1200 01:15:37,834 --> 01:15:39,000 [Tong] People are looking for answers 1201 01:15:39,002 --> 01:15:41,102 and people want justice and I think what most people 1202 01:15:41,104 --> 01:15:44,138 in the telegram group want is not just their money back, 1203 01:15:44,140 --> 01:15:46,474 but they wanna see justice served. 1204 01:15:47,076 --> 01:15:49,677 We cannot have a $200 million fraud 1205 01:15:49,679 --> 01:15:51,646 just happen and everyone go, "lol, whatever." 1206 01:15:51,648 --> 01:15:55,616 [Amber] It's not just regulation, it has to be effective regulation 1207 01:15:55,618 --> 01:15:59,120 and part of it is I think we need more and better enforcement. 1208 01:15:59,122 --> 01:16:01,756 If someone is getting punched or stabbed or shot, 1209 01:16:01,758 --> 01:16:04,025 that's going to take precedence 1210 01:16:04,027 --> 01:16:07,395 over somebody losing a few dollars or many dollars, 1211 01:16:07,797 --> 01:16:11,032 and I understand that, 1212 01:16:11,034 --> 01:16:13,935 but on some level if we never investigate these things, 1213 01:16:13,937 --> 01:16:16,237 if we never prosecute these things, 1214 01:16:16,239 --> 01:16:18,039 they're going to keep happening. 1215 01:16:18,041 --> 01:16:23,177 [Tense music playing] 1216 01:16:38,561 --> 01:16:43,264 [Upbeat music playing] 1217 01:16:43,266 --> 01:16:45,600 [Ryan] Oh, I hope he's alive. Yeah, I hope so. 1218 01:16:45,602 --> 01:16:48,035 I hope he's alive and we get him, and we get our money back 1219 01:16:48,037 --> 01:16:51,072 but a perfect world, I'd like them to find Gerry cotten 1220 01:16:51,074 --> 01:16:53,174 sitting on a beach and lock him up. 1221 01:16:56,579 --> 01:16:57,912 [Taylor] Where's the money, Gerry? 1222 01:16:57,914 --> 01:16:59,880 Where's the money and will we ever know? 1223 01:16:59,882 --> 01:17:01,682 ♪ You think I was fooling you ♪ 1224 01:17:01,684 --> 01:17:03,818 ♪ well you're only fooling yourself ♪ 1225 01:17:03,820 --> 01:17:06,220 ♪ cause I'm gone with the money ♪ 1226 01:17:09,258 --> 01:17:14,328 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪ 1227 01:17:15,131 --> 01:17:18,933 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪ 1228 01:17:20,870 --> 01:17:26,007 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪ 1229 01:17:26,776 --> 01:17:30,277 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪ 1230 01:17:44,093 --> 01:17:46,961 ♪ You were looking for the code ♪ 1231 01:17:50,166 --> 01:17:52,433 ♪ now you're in the hole ♪ 1232 01:17:55,738 --> 01:17:58,339 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪ 1233 01:18:01,544 --> 01:18:04,412 ♪ I'm gone with the money ♪