Dead Man's Switch: A Crypto Mystery (2021) - full transcript

It's really a story about
betrayal and lying and greed.

We're here to
talk about bitcoin.

So, Gerald, starting with you.

So I created quadrigacx in 2013

and we basically are now the
largest exchange in Canada

for buying and selling bitcoin.

Congratulations.

Before Gerald
Cotten died in India at age 30,

nobody could get their
money off the exchange.

It's amazing that
the biggest question I have

is whether or not a person died.



Reported death of Nova
Scotia businessman Gerald Cotten is tragic.

When the 30-year-old
died suddenly last month...

Leaving apparently,
250 million dollars

in cryptocurrency locked
on his personal laptop.

Sounds pretty bleak for
investors trying to get their money.

Cotten's
widow, she doesn't know

the passwords to her
late husband's laptop.

Most of the money
is locked away in cyber space.

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

Right now
investors, they can do nothing.

Something
is tremendously fishy

about this whole exchange
of where exactly the CEO went.

Conspiracy theorists
suggest Cotten faked his death.

Unless
Cotten made arrangements.



A dead man's
switch would be something

that Gerry would've had to
set up before he passed away.

Investors
are looking for answers.

Where is this money?

♪ Greed and gold ♪

♪ forever the loneliest road ♪

There's so much intrigue, there's
so much funny business, you know?

So, it's kind of like
connecting dots

and see what you
can come up with.

Maybe he was going to
fake his death. Maybe he actually died.

- I don't know.
- That's another good question.

I am an
independent journalist

and I research cryptocurrency.

First I got interested in it
because of the technology

and then over time that led to, uh,
a fascination with financial crimes.

Joe!

I'm a
business reporter.

I generally cover
capital markets,

but I've also kind of
taken up this side hobby

of writing about the sort of
wacky world of cryptocurrency.

I still sometimes just think
about this story all this time later.

- What do you still think about?
- I don't know.

There's so many crazy
theories out there on the Internet.

I found out about
quadriga very early on.

It was 2013, I was an intern at
the Canadian press newswire

and came across the fact that Canada
was getting its first ever bitcoin ATM.

It's now up and
running at the waves coffee shop

in downtown Vancouver.

The virtual
currency is traded in cyber space

and stored in the
user's online wallet.

And you
go to a business that accepts it,

they ring you up, you can
scan a code on your phone,

your balance goes down and now
you're enjoying your morning cup of tea.

A bitcoin ATM is
a standalone machine

where you can
go up, put in cash,

and you can buy
bitcoin just like that.

Once you go
through a bitcoin ATM

you've got your bitcoin
and then you can

begin trading it on an
exchange like quadriga.

So, for those of you
who aren't familiar

with bitcoin exchanges
and what we do.

I like to compare it
to a stock exchange,

however, instead
of trading stocks

on our exchange,
people trade bitcoin.

You have buyers
and you have sellers,

and they get matched, and
they transact with one another.

Our guest tonight is
Michael Patryn from quadriga.

Well, in mid-2013 the only exchange
of note in Canada was vortex,

they had a monopoly which
many believe they were abusing.

So the co-founder
Gerald and I believed

that we could do better
and, uh, quadriga was born.

Michael Patryn was about
five years older than Gerald,

so he, you know, I think he
was like a big brother to them.

So he was one of the people that taught
Gerald the ropes in this sort of business.

As far as, uh, crypto
exchange founders go,

Gerald actually had a
fairly public presence

presenting the image of a trustworthy
businessman, of a trustworthy entrepreneur.

And he was, you know,
speaking our language.

Today we are
joined by Gerry Cotten,

the director of bitcoin co-op,

And let
me paint the picture.

Mr. Cotten looked
probably exactly

what you think an Internet
genius would look like.

A young attractive man.

I was doing some research
'cause I knew you were coming this week.

To be honest, I got more
confused doing the research.

With bitcoin, so it's just
a string of numbers and letters

sending a payment to another
string of numbers and letters.

When I send the
transaction, it's recognized

by a bunch of other
peers in the network.

And then it's publicly
recorded into the public ledger

which is called
the "blockchain."

See, that's the cool part about
bitcoin, there's a public ledger.

So you can actually
see all transactions

- that happen in the bitcoin network.
- Ever? Really?

Ever. Yeah. So it
essentially removes the need

for a central authority.
It's like the bank.

It's interesting that
this all kind of came out

in the sort of aftermath of
the global financial crisis.

That crisis made a lot
of people stop and go,

"well, why are we trusting
these financial institutions?

Why are we trusting
these banks?"

There's no
need for a central authority

because everyone
is a central authority.

Oh, right.

It's the beauty of it.
Then you get rid of the fees

- and a lot of the boarders and things like that.
- Right.

Well, how does
Joe schmo get involved?

Well, the first thing I
recommend doing is visiting bitcoin co-op.

You can find a ton
of information there.

Basically discussions
about bitcoin

and what's going on in
the industry and so forth.

This is the central. The
door is magnet locked.

We first got the place, uh, as a
hang out for the crypto community.

Bitcoin co-op. That's, uh, and
we did all the outreach stuff.

Uh, our hall of
shame. Failed moneys.

This is a, I don't
wanna say central hub,

that sounds oxymoronic
or something.

Quadriga, those guys,
they came to the co-op

offering basically to
fund our outreach events.

Like, we got a
table at car free day,

we gave away
free coins to people.

They got a lot of publicity
for their associations with us.

Every Monday night, we
actually have our bitcoin co-op meeting.

So we've had times
when 50 people show up.

Oh, yeah.

And everyone's
just interested in bitcoin.

I get to the meetup
early and Mike would be there.

He'd walk me through trading
concepts, and he just did this

and the same way I get excited about
bitcoin, he got excited about trading.

He had money, and he
was a confirmed good trader.

You can look at him posting
his public positions early on

and making some
really good calls.

He was really
nice, but so is Gerry.

Gerry was really nice too.
Always smiling, always happy.

Pull that up to there.

He helped my kids
buy bitcoin from an ATM,

there's still a video
on YouTube of that.

Okay, now click "send bitcoins."

Yeah, he
was a pilot for fun.

And he was really
just super friendly.

In many
ways Toronto bitcoiners

are a pretty small, um,
tight knit community.

I'm the founder and
CEO at outlier solutions

we're an anti-money laundering
compliance consultant firm.

So we spent most of our time
trying to keep people out of trouble.

I started going to meet ups.

That was where I first learned about
quadriga and where I first met Gerry.

He was a really likeable guy.

Cool. It works.

He was a really bright
guy, he was really funny.

One of the best parts
about Canada's new money

is that it's fully
waterproof. Check it out.

I was a person
who had strong suspicions

and I didn't come out and say
that publicly back in the day.

And I think that
there are a lot of folks

in the community that
are in the same boat,

where we had a lot of reservations
in terms of quadriga generally,

but we liked Gerry and we
didn't wanna see them fail

and we didn't
call it out publicly.

In 2015, the two other major
exchanges in Canada went out of business.

And that made quadrigacx the
main game in town, you know?

That was, they were the
big exchange at the time.

What happened to the former
largest bitcoin exchange?

Um, they just cited a variety of
reasons. Banking troubles, legal.

We'll probably find out a lot more
about them in the coming days,

but as a result of
them shutting down,

- it's been great for me.
- Yes.

It's been a
very, very busy time

and a very exciting time for us.

Our volume has more than doubled

since they announced
closure of vortex.

Well, we think you
should buy a really big boat too.

I think he'll get that
before we get a boat.

We have announced that
quadrigacx will be going public.

I know.

In 2015, they start,
you know, promoting it

as the soon to be first publicly
traded cryptocurrency exchange.

Um, and at the time I
thought, well, you know,

"if they go public, that'll
be a pretty big story."

We have some plans that
I'm itching to tell you about,

but there are amazing
press releases

and I've been told to
shut up about them.

Michael Patryn, he
was kind of instrumental

to this push to take
quadriga public.

And then the effort to take
quadriga public ultimately fails.

Patryn says that him and
Gerry have a big falling out.

His involvement in
the company ended

and he stopped knowing anything

about the day-to-day
operations of quadriga.

It does
seem as though Mike

had ceased involvement in 2016.

It seems that way.
Emphasis on "seems."

After that time, cotten operated
quadrigacx as a one-man band.

Maybe he didn't
want to lose control.

Maybe he kinda liked having the
situation where he had total autonomy

over this exchange
and just so much power.

People got into bitcoin
because they liked the idea

of getting rich for free.
Magical Internet money.

I'm a cryptocurrency journalist

and the author of the book
attack of the 50 foot blockchain.

This came out in July, 2017,

just as the big cryptocurrency
bubble was on its upswing.

I started putting a few
thousand dollars in bitcoin

and then, few months later it
went from $1,000 to $2,000.

I was like, "wow, I
made 100% of my return."

So bitcoin, the software is
just an open source software,

anyone can copy it and twiddle
it a bit and they've got a new coin.

The bubble of 2017, that
bubble was people pretty much just

trading between the
different crypto currencies

and making a lot
of money doing it.

Like a lot of money doing it.

♪ Bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪

♪ got me investing
in each of them ♪

♪ bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪

♪ I've got that crypto
making me millions ♪

I turned $350 into $12,000.

He became
a millionaire at 24.

You absolutely can
make a lot of money.

The dizzying ascent
continued today.

It hit a peak in December,
mid-December where it was nearly $20,000.

♪ Bitcoin, ripple, ethereum ♪

In 2017, about
over a billion dollars

in transactions went
through the exchange.

There's so much money
coming on to quadriga now.

All of a sudden he's got this windfall
of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The other key player
is Jennifer Robertson.

That is Gerald cotten's
girlfriend, ultimately, his wife.

I knew that he was engaged, but he
was very private and very quiet about that.

People who thought that
they knew him quite well

said that she sort of came out of the
woodwork. They didn't know who she was.

We know that she
changed her name,

which makes her
quite mysterious.

She was Jennifer Griffith and
now she's Jennifer Robertson.

There were also these rumors.

At one time she seems to have
used the name Jennifer Forgeron.

She didn't become
Jennifer cotten.

We know very little about
Gerald's wife. Very, very little.

We do know that Gerald was
living a very lavish lifestyle,

which included a lot of travel,

the purchasing of
at least one plane...

Jen and Gerry
lived a life of luxury.

He had this 51 foot sailboat.

We know that they had all
of these properties together.

All of these
wonderful vacations,

staying in these
fancy looking hotels.

Mostly when we corresponded
it was electronically,

and he was usually
traveling somewhere.

So I just got the sense
that he was travelling

and enjoying the "work from
wherever you are" mentality.

But definitely there
were also problems there.

It's late 2017, early 2018...

And the price of
bitcoin now is falling.

The cryptocurrency
has gone from hitting

a new record price
yesterday to nose diving today.

You know, there's a
lot of trades on the exchange.

The platform can't keep
up with the business.

And then they start to run
into some real problems.

There is this theory

that the company's
financial troubles

started with this
ethereum incident.

In 2017, the company
came out and said

there was some
sort of technical glitch

that caused them to
lose a bunch of ether.

So this money was
effectively sent into a black hole.

You know, it went
undetected for a very long time.

I was part
of a Skype group

that when the quadriga
team discovered

they accidentally locked up $14
million on the ether blockchain,

that Skype group is sort
of where they posted it

to try to figure out
what was going on.

And so this ether just sits
in this contract to this day.

- No one can access it.
- It's just like a, it's like a contract bug.

Yeah, it was just the contract
was not, it was not a smart contract.

There's no way that
you could recover for this

unless you expected
the price of ether

to go 4x in two months,
which nobody did.

So, they lose 14 million.

The bigger problem is that cibc,
which is a big bank in Canada,

they essentially freeze
about $25 million.

It's not
uncommon in the crypto world

for crypto companies to
have issues getting banking.

The banks are concerned
about money laundering,

they don't necessarily
understand blockchain,

they don't know how
to trace transactions.

We've all heard of
the issues where banks

are closing down banks accounts

for different bitcoin
exchanges. It's a huge mess.

So quadriga can't
get any type of banking.

If you would send
money to quadriga,

you would send it to one of their
third party payment processors.

So what a third party
payment processor is,

essentially it's like
a shell company.

And those sort of funnel money

through this web of
accounts or shell companies.

The cibc funds, they're frozen 'cause they
didn't know the source of the accounts.

It was very
annoying for customers.

They'd be like, "hey, give
quadriga back their money, jerk.

I'm trying to withdraw
my money, stupid bank."

I did see the
complaints escalating.

Because businesses in
the cryptocurrency world

have trouble maintaining
a bank account,

the idea that, okay, so your
transaction might be delayed,

your withdrawal might be
delayed, is not that unusual.

They posted
Facebook updates every day.

Almost every day
during this time

and even on Reddit
people were always saying,

"oh, people always
got their money."

It just took a while, but
no one ever, you know,

didn't receive their
money at that time.

This is October 2018.
So I believed them.

January 14th, 2019.

I remember that
morning quite clearly.

There was this notice from quadriga
that Gerald cotten died suddenly.

I was really shocked.

I was really sad.

I really liked him.

I'd seen the headlines.

Reddit was going crazy,
there were questions all over

and we didn't really
know anything at that point.

We knew that he
had been in India.

They had
apparently gone to India

because, to celebrate
their honeymoon, right?

And to open this orphanage.

After
talking to people,

we discovered that he
had had digestive issues

and specifically
crohn's for some time.

It's kind of rare these days
for people to die of crohn's.

He has this horrible
episode that starts

with what just looks
like traveler's diarrhea

and then ends in three
cardiac arrests and his death.

And apparently the only person by his side
continuously until Gerry died was Jennifer.

Rather than letting people know
right away that Gerald cotten had died,

she withheld that information.

They've been operating
for a full month after he died.

Yeah, it doesn't... It doesn't
make a lot of sense, right?

Like how do you...
How do you square that?

It sort of
brings up the question,

what role did Jennifer Robertson
play in all this, you know?

I mean there's just question
after question after question.

Jennifer Robertson
then became at that point

the largest
shareholder in quadriga.

So then the sort of panic
about withdrawals escalates.

They put in limits.
$50,000 per month.

People were trying to get their
money out but they couldn't.

It was obvious
things were really bad.

Suddenly
the site goes down.

My stomach turned.
I knew what it meant.

No one ever sees that
in the exchange site

and doesn't think, "is
all my money gone?"

That was
quite a big red flag.

I never stopped
seeing red for months now.

And then I believe it
was a day or two after that

there was a notice
on the website

that says quadriga has
filed for creditor protection.

My co-writer Joe castaldo got
the filing from the courthouse,

and he says, "oh, my god!
There's $180 million of crypto

that seems to be missing
and there's $250 million total

that is owed to people
and they can't get any of it."

And at that point we knew we had

a pretty big story on our hands.

That moment when that notice
appeared on the quadriga website,

that was, that was
sort of like, "wow."

This is when people really
realized what happened.

Panic. Worry.

Yeah, just a cocktail of,
uh, negative emotions.

Yeah, I just went like, "wow, this
really happened to me. Unbelievable."

We were
pulling 18-hour days.

I would go to sleep
thinking about quadriga,

and I would wake up
thinking about quadriga.

First we started with the actual
contents of the filings, ccaa filing.

'Cause there was a lot
of information in there.

You know, all the
affidavits were in there

of, you know, Jen talking about
how the business was being run.

She said that she
was not really...

That she was not at all involved
in the company operations.

But we do know that Jennifer
had a quadriga e-mail address.

We know that Jennifer ran a
company called Robertson nova

that was processing
payments on behalf of quadriga.

I remember
reading the court filings

like it was clear that quadriga
was barely a real company.

It was just Gerry
with his computer.

He was the sole
director, so this is one person,

one young man who had access

to hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of funds.

It really seems
that Gerry had kept

the other employees in the dark.

There was only seven
contractors, I believe.

There were some chat
logs that were leaked

by Aaron Matthews
with the contractors.

According
to these chat logs,

Gerry, he basically just took
over running the company himself.

If you
wanted to withdraw,

Aaron would send
a request to Gerry

and then Gerry would
honor that request manually.

He was the only one
that actually controlled

like the crypto,
the cold wallets.

Your cold wallet,
that'd be your bank vault

that has 100
million bucks in it.

And then the hot wallet would be like
the teller who has like 10 grand cash.

So if you Rob the teller, you're
not getting all that's in the bank vault.

If you lose the keys of the bank
vault, you've lost the gold bars.

This is exactly how it works.

If you lose that key,
your coin's gone.

It's not normal for an exchange
owner to be the only key holder.

I was very surprised
to read about the keys.

So the idea that no one else had access
to any backups in any meaningful way.

He was so diligent, and he
was so paranoid in so many ways

that there would've been
something somewhere.

He paid lip service
to having cold wallets

spread in different, uh,
safety deposit boxes.

We're obviously
holding a bunch of bitcoin.

So what we do is we
actually store them offline

in paper wallets in our
bank vault, in a deposit box,

because that's the best
way to keep the coin secure.

And Gerald
makes reference

to a safe that he had bolted
to the rafters of his attic.

When the safe was investigated,

all that was found
were four, four holes.

So where's the safe?

How the hell can
you be in this space

and be controlling so much money

and not have any
sort of backup plan.

Was there a contingency
plan that failed?

Was there perhaps some plan such
as a dead man switch, for example?

Dead man switch is a
mechanism a coder could set up.

Say, if Gerry didn't
put a password in for 30 days,

then, you know, his private keys

would be sent to someone
who can take care of it.

And if there was no plan, why
was there no plan? Was it hubris?

Was that Gerry thinking
that he was invincible?

That nothing could
happen to him?

Was it because Gerry didn't
feel like he could trust anyone?

What happened, Gerry?
Where's the money?

I certainly have
a lot of empathy

for people who lost
money in quadriga.

Actually, I think this is,
uh, we can do a left turn here.

It was just the shock of how
could my timing be this bad?

If I had sold my
house any time else

this wouldn't have
happened to me.

Yeah, I pretty much ended up, uh,
losing my life's savings because of it.

I lost about $400,000
in quadrigacx, right?

So I posted this video, it's a very candid
video because I was very frustrated.

As humans often do we
get greedy and we get selfish

and I was jealous of my friends
for making so much money,

so, um, I kinda took a big risk.

I actually took out three loans
from the bank and I put it all in crypto,

which as you know,
um, crypto crashed.

And I put myself into
an even deeper hole.

And the only way
for me to dig myself

out of that hole is
to sell my apartment.

So that's what I did.

Yeah, my apartment's pretty
much right at the end of this street.

I was in the west one,
which is this one right here.

Fifth floor.

I sold it at the time when I also
wanted to move back to Canada.

I wanted to quit my job,
but it's what came after,

you know, that would
kind of really shook me.

I was looking for
an alternate way

to move my money
from us to Canada

and why didn't I go
through the bank?

Well, the banks usually
charges a 1 or 2% commission,

but quadrigacx had a
10% premium at the time.

Canada's best bitcoin exchange.

This is what I thought
cryptocurrency was invented to do

as to easily move money
between, um, different places, right?

Global
withdraw options

including direct payments
to any visa card worldwide.

Quadriga definitely
knew how to pull people in.

You'll never
have trouble moving funds

into and out of your
quadrigacx account.

Canada's best bitcoin exchange.

I was in... I was really
depressed, right?

I was basically
gambling with my money.

The only investment
advice that I ever give anyone

when it comes to
bitcoin, cryptocurrency,

anything that's really high risk

is think about all
of your money.

Picture it just catching
fire and burning slowly

and at the point
where you start to cry

make sure that you're
putting less than that

into something
that's super high risk.

The most
important thing all viewers,

anyone watching
this has to know,

is note your keys,
note your coins,

never leave all your
money on the exchange.

Where people run into
danger is where they try

and turn their bitcoins into more
bitcoins by using their bitcoins.

Having a background
on computer science

I was able to appreciate crypto.

I was fortunate enough
to discover it very early on.

I had stored much of
my wealth in bitcoin.

I wanted to take the
fortune I had generated,

diversify it and move
on to other things.

Because quadriga was the
biggest exchange in Canada

and because the amount that I was
dealing with had grown quite large

the only logical
place to pull it out

of the ecosystem
was through quadriga.

More than
100 thousand people

found their money
appeared to have vanished

and experts are skeptical
people will ever see

a fraction of what they're owed.

It's difficult to let it go.

And maybe even
it shouldn't be let go

until we do have clear answers

regarding whether or not
there's money still out there.

I, uh, tried to rally
people on Reddit.

You know, it wasn't long after
that we had a telegram group

with, you know, new
people joining by the minute.

So we all kinda
flocked to the telegram group.

At the beginning we
was just thinking about

let's get ourselves
some lawyers,

try to get some
of our money back

and, uh, try to understand
what's going on.

So then Joe had the bright
idea to go and track down the will.

In November, Gerald
writes his very detailed will.

On December 9th,
he dies in India.

The fact that he
had updated this will

just two weeks before he
died, that was a real shocker.

And mind
you, this is 2018,

so everything's falling
apart on the exchange.

The problems with the
bank, people are complaining

that they can't get their
money off the exchange.

So, things are falling apart.
He writes a very detailed will.

It's almost like he knew that
something was going to happen to him.

The will was fascinating cause
we discovered all of these assets.

You know, 17 properties, a
yacht, a plane, a Lexus, a mini Cooper.

Jennifer Robertson is the
executer. When he dies mysteriously,

she gets all the assets, right?

And to
us, one of our favorites,

was that he has these two
chihuahuas named nitro and gully.

He had left this sum of money.

There's $100,000 trust for the
care of these two chihuahuas

in the event that Jennifer
doesn't survive him.

Nitro and gully.

- I think they're doing okay.
- I do.

Just how, like, meticulous
he was about laying out

what was gonna happen
to his assets, even his dogs,

like, after he died
and yet compare that

to the mess that
quadriga was. It was crazy.

The cryptocurrency
confusion is attracting

a growing number of
lawyers and accountants

suggesting they can sort it out.

Ernst and young were
brought in to be the monitors

on the ccaa protection, which
is the stage before bankruptcy.

Ernst and young,
the court appointed monitor

says it has secured a total of 11
electronic devices used by Gerald cotten,

and is working to gain access to
the assets that are still off limits.

Plans are also underway
for a forensic review.

An effort by crypto experts to figure out
how to find all those missing investments.

You've got
this firm from the sort

of traditional mainstream
financial world.

You know, they're
having to wrap their minds

around this whole
new asset class.

There's a lot of questions about
where all the cash was flowing,

and this is why Ernst and young

clearly got the high-powered
forensic accountants on it.

Um, because they needed them.

The first two Ernst
and young reports came out.

There were no company bank accounts,
there was no segregation of funds.

Everything was sort of mixed
in together into a giant pool.

As the accountants
go through everything,

I mean, they had
a heck of a time.

There seems to
have been no accounting system.

Maybe there is in this, you know, encrypted
laptop that nobody can get access to.

How do you get in a position
where you're managing $200 million

and you literally
don't have a single,

like, balance sheet at
all? What? Like what?

With bitcoin, it's all
in the public sphere.

Anyone can check
it, anyone can verify it.

If I say I own something,
Alex can prove it,

Anthony can prove
it, anyone can prove it

just by looking on the Internet.

Their claim was that, was not
that the money was gone, right?

Their claim was
that the private keys

that protected the piles
of money were gone.

Which meant that there should still be
piles of money somewhere on the blockchain.

I literally just wanted
to answer the question

of how much money
is in the ether wallets,

what are the addresses and
that's how it started.

That's how it started.

I'm the founder
and CEO of mycrypto.

Mycrypto is a non-custodial
wallet for cryptocurrency.

Non-custodial means that
we don't hold your funds,

but we basically allow people
to interact with the blockchain,

access their funds,
send their funds around,

but we don't actually hold them.

So, my investigation,
once again,

did not start as like a "let
me investigate quadriga."

Basically my plan
was like, you know,

spend a couple of
hours, find the addresses,

I'll post them on Reddit
and move on with my life.

There are just so many
transactions, like 700,000 transactions.

And so one trick
that I use is that

it'll just automatically
color the addresses.

The red addresses, the
one that we're analyzing,

the blue is quadriga's
2016 address

and then it'll change to
green and then purple.

And then you can just
scroll through them,

and you'll start to
notice patterns appear.

When I found, like,
the first address

I was like, "if I dump the
whole spreadsheet," right?

"The whole ledger. If I grab
all the data and then I sort it,

by, like, the highest
to the lowest,

I should be able to see
where the money goes."

Basically like
three weeks later...

I still didn't know
where the money went.

And then I did things like
combining all the addresses

and then sorting by the amount,

and I did things like separating
the outgoing transactions

from the incoming ones, but at the
end of the day, there's no piles of money.

Period.

So you can find the private keys all
you want, there's still no piles of money,

so, you know, what
the hell happened?

What
happened to that money?

And if it is in cryptocurrency,

why is it proving
so elusive to find?

There is this paper
trail, this digital ledger

of every single transaction that anyone
can access, but the identities are masked.

So you can see the
address of a bitcoin wallet

that moved money to
another bitcoin wallet,

but you wouldn't necessarily
know who controls those wallets.

The court appointed
monitor and the ccaa process

found six bitcoin wallets,

um, that were all
emptied out by April 2018.

Ui did an investigation
and said, "no,

there's nothing more
in the cold wallets."

Where is it then?

Everything is all bull.

The answers are out there.

And you start looking at the
things and where the money moved,

and the biggest money movements
that we saw was expected

which is big chunks of
money moving between

sort of these three
storage accounts

that quadriga used
between, like, 2016 and 2018.

But then you see, like,
some other addresses pop up.

So, this is one of those
weird red addresses.

It is an address that just
really consistently appears

from the very
beginning of quadriga.

There's these other accounts
that money was sent to.

Maybe all the single
transactions were 100 ether.

But there were
thousands of them.

This is insane.

When you look at the
ust sort of equivalents,

you have this list of addresses
that have received $40 million,

$50 million, $100 million.

And then the question is, "okay, so
who owns these addresses? Right?"

Who the hell is quadriga
sending $100 million to?

So, if we go to this specific
address, it's poloniex.

So this is a poloniex address.

Someone sent money to
their quadriga deposit address,

and their money was then sent
to a poloniex deposit address

immediately without
touching quadriga's hot wallet.

Like, that's weird.
That's not normal.

- That's pretty crazy.
- Right?

Why would an exchange take
money that customers have deposited

and send it to another exchange?

The absolute most legitimate reason
that I could possibly think of was, like,

that they were doing something
with their own profits, you know, it's...

Not necessarily responsible,

but it's totally legal for a company to
take their profits and, um, invest them.

Arbitrage is actually one
thing that I've done quite a bit of.

But what's arbitrage?

Arbitrage is
basically a financial term

where you buy
something at a lower price,

resell it at a higher
price instantly,

so you never actually have
any chance of losing money.

Price differences between
exchanges were often quite significant.

It's often a fraction of 1%,

but if we're talking
millions of dollars,

then that could be
a significant profit

for the person who
facilitates that trade.

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

Oh, like
hundreds or so...

Really?

Yeah, it was very
profitable in November and...

Are we hanging out with Mark
Zuckerberg now? Is that what's going on?

There's this theory out
there that he lost the money

by trying to trade
his way out of debt.

The beginning
of Gerry's snowball

was theory in classic
loss and the banking loss.

Started his snowball
where he thinks,

"well, I'm only 30
million in the hole.

I bet if this gamble
pays off I can recuperate,

no one will never
know what happened."

Gerry seems
to have thought

that he could trade his
way out of his problems.

This sort of trading
that's gambling.

He was just really bad
at it, he lost all the money

and it's like, "why
did you do this?"

It looks very like an
overconfident idiot.

I'm not convinced
that he is a bumbling idiot

because if you're operating
an exchange, there is...

Opportunity to do a whole
bunch of nefarious things.

The strongest, I
guess, theory I have is,

like, some sort of
money laundering.

Criminals commit crimes,

those crimes generate profits,
they want to hide the money

by moving it through
the financial system

and the process of hiding that
money is called money laundering.

Cryptocurrency is both very
easy to trace and very hard to trace.

There could be wallets
that people didn't even know about.

Once you get to
another exchange,

then only the exchange knows what
happened with those transactions. Right?

Because they could
be transferred between

different accounts
at that exchange,

it could be converted
between different currencies,

then it could move to
a different exchange

through a different
wallet address

and at that point you
sort of lose the paper trail.

As soon as you start
involving different countries,

different currencies, it
becomes much harder to trace.

I went on
Twitter, and I said like,

"here's some interesting
transactions or interesting patterns."

And that's when the people
that had been doing the research,

the journalists, that's
when they stared at me, like,

"so you guys followed
the money, but, like,

here's his social background.

Here's the business documents,
here's the list of people,

like, real life
people in his life."

And that's when I was like,
"oh, shit, this is amazing."

Like, "this is terrible. This
is like the best story ever."

The Internet was filled with
all these rumors about Michael patryn.

Yeah, those rumors
were very persistent.

I know, I was very intrigued by it
cause I looked up Michael patryn

and I saw that he graduated
from the university or something,

so I just e-mailed the school to find out
like, "hey, did this guy actually graduate?"

And they said we have no
record of somebody with that name.

I was like, "okay,
that's not adding up.

There must be something
more going on here."

Been working with digital
currency since about 2003.

Everything okay?

Someone at the time
had posted how he was actually

this money launderer or
that he was an identity theft.

And that he actually went by a
different name which was Omar Dhanani.

Omar Dhanani is a guy who served
time in prison in the United States

for his role in an identity
theft and credit card fraud ring

called "shadow crew."

And the service that he
provided to shadow crew members

was a money laundering service.

So shadow crew gets
busted by us authorities.

And he was sentenced
to 18 months,

and it does look like he
served close to that sentence.

And then we've managed
to obtain the booking photo

of Omar Dhanani from the passaic
county sheriff's office in New Jersey

where he was taking in
on his shadow crew charges

and we tell Michael patryn,

"look, we have these
two photos of you.

And I mean, they're
of you."

Close to 15 years had past
between those two photos,

but it's still very clearly
the same person.

He's got the same
facial features.

You can see there's some
kind of, like, scar or pock Mark

or something kind
of on his forehead.

And so he asks us to
send him the photos.

So we obliged, we
sent him the photos.

Yeah, he told us

"while I obviously disagree
with your conclusions,

I have to wait for counsel prior
to responding more thoroughly,

which is unlikely to happen
before your deadline."

Bye-bye.

Bloomberg went and
found the, uh, actual name changes.

He went
from Omar Dhanani

to Omar patryn and
ultimately to Michael patryn.

So his name
is Michael patryn,

that's his legal name,
but he is the same guy

who was Omar Dhanani,
the convicted hacker.

And we had even
asked him, remember?

We said, "are you Omar
Dhanani?" And he just said "no."

A man of mystery, I guess.

This is our headquarters
of sorts. I can see your car from here.

You are currently
not being robbed.

I knew Mike better than Gerry.

Some people called
him a huge tough guy.

One time, his dog got
hurt and he practically cried.

A tiny little dog. It's
kind of humorous to me.

Like, "wow, that's
gangster of you."

I think that's probably a lot
of people who do bad things.

People are very complicated.

Like, I heard accusations
about identity theft,

and I told them, "you have to tell me
the truth, your name, what you've done."

And he just refused
to be honest with me.

So I just said, "we can't
be friends anymore."

How do you get to a
point where this individual

who's definitely known
to police in Canada

is responsible for
people's money?

Why would Michael
patryn step out of the picture?

And what was
Michael patryn doing

between 2016 when he
left quadriga and 2019...

We know a lot more about
Gerald cotten now and Michael patryn.

We found out that they met

long before they
launched quadriga together.

Michael patryn, he met
Gerald back, way back when,

we think he met Gerald probably
on the talkgold forms in around 2003.

This was ten years
before quadriga launched.

Talkgold forms, that was a form
for promoting Ponzi schemes.

He was in high school and
that's where he met Mike patryn.

He's been doing this kind of
schemy stuff since he was young.

Do you remember s&s
investments when he was a teenager?

Yeah, of course.

His first Ponzi scheme
that we found. Like,

he did lose investors' money
then too and tried to return it all.

Gerry cotten he was a
Ponzi schemer since he was 15.

And he's a guy who thought, "I can get
money out of people just for the asking."

Yeah, I actually, uh,
heard a sort of an anecdote

about how he, uh, was buying
candy from a Confectionary,

reselling it to kids
in several countries.

You know, you can look at that as
an ambitious young entrepreneur,

but I don't think
I'd go that far.

After he's
released from prison,

we know that Omar Dhanani
was deported to Canada

and then registered a
company called Midas gold.

It's basically an exchanger
for Liberty reserve.

This, uh, very large
black market bank.

So he gets back into
moving money again,

cause that's what he knows best.

There was evidence that Gerald
cotten was involved in that as well.

And then Liberty
reserve, of course, gets busted.

So that's done with.

So what next?

Well, suddenly, cotten and
patryn appear in Vancouver

in the bitcoin, you
know, community.

With bitcoin you basically
get rid of that large corporation.

So I was really, really
fascinated with that technology.

He talked up this sort of
libertarian bitcoin angle.

"I believe in everything you
guys believe, you should trust me."

Everyone liked them. They
supported the community

in a time when no
one else really would.

He almost never said
anything in co-op meetings.

He sat there and smiled.

Always smiling.

Maybe in hindsight
there's a red flag

that someone too generous
is too good to be true.

Money laundering
and scamming people in Ponzi,

once you realize that
Gerald's been doing that...

It's harder to say, like,
you know, flip a coin

and he could be a bumbling
idiot or an evil genius.

Like, you look at
it and you just go...

"Well, what are the chances
that both these people

literally turned over a new leaf

six months after their
last Ponzi exit scam?"

Fifth report, that was the,
um, really excoriating one.

Yeah.

We have found out
later through Ernst and young,

Gerald cotten was setting up
fake accounts on the exchange.

14 fake accounts, things,
names like "aretwo deetwo."

And "seethree peaohh."

So if you would send
money to quadriga,

what you would see in
your quadriga account

would be not real
Canadian dollars,

but what were called quad bucks.

Quadrigacx bucks.

This was kind of an
in between currency.

They weren't real dollars.

Now, the problem with that is
you can make money out of nothing.

He was funding these accounts
with fake crypto, fake dollars.

Bitcoin ATM, they're
great tools for money laundering.

If you didn't wanna
have a financial trail,

you just go and feed that cash

and it was hooked
right up to the exchange.

♪ Dirty cash I want you,
dirty cash I need you, ooh ♪

♪ money talks, money talks ♪

♪ dirty cash I want you... ♪

People could actually, if they
withdrew money from the exchange,

if they could go and pick
up cash at a certain location.

They'd even have boxes of cash
sent to them to their door, okay?

Shoe boxes of cash delivered.

That's a tip off for some
funny business right there.

According to court documents
that we have from Ernst and young,

Gerald cotten would direct these
third party payment processors

or shell companies to, to funnel
money directly into his bank account

and the accounts of,
of Jennifer Robertson.

♪ Dirty cash I want
you. Dirty cash... ♪

- Oh, that's great.
- They even stole...

The stove full of all the unpaid
checks. That's just fabulous.

There was a great photo
which was from one of the,

hearings of stove top

with bundles of bank
drafts sitting on it.

That have been there
two years uncashed.

People were sending
them money in 2017,

they never even banked
it or cashed it in any way.

It's like, "how does that work?"

It was some sort of money
laundering chop-shop.

We take steps to
make sure that people

aren't laundering funds
through our system.

We obviously don't wanna facilitate any
sort of illicit transaction of that type.

I'm just imagining the
person that Ernst and young

are writing those
monitor reports.

They don't actually say
"and everyone involved

should go to jail immediately."

But they totally meant it.

So you have to have
a certain intelligence

and understanding of people
and greed to be a good conman.

It's possible that he
realized sometime in 2018

that he'd really
screwed up his own con.

At what point he
started to think,

"maybe I have to have an
idea for how to step out of this."

The scam was collapsing.

He couldn't keep it going
any longer, then oops he died.

Quite soon after he died, uh,
someone came to me and said,

"dude, he's not dead."

It was the time of his
death that made people wonder

was there a possibility that he had
faked his death? Was this an exit scam?

If you were going
to fake a death,

India would be a
great place to do that.

You know,
dying on his honeymoon

while building an
orphanage for children,

this is all, like, too perfect.

So nice that it's
a red flag for me.

He's building
an orphanage, okay?

Well, maybe he's
a philanthropist

and then I kind of ran
that by a couple of people

and they said, "no, we
never really knew Gerry

to have this sort
of charitable side."

Everything is falling
apart in the exchange,

and it was at this point
where make or break.

And we have seen exit scams in
the cryptocurrency world before.

And then someone came
on the Reddit, qcx contractor,

they claimed to be a contractor

and they showed of internal
screenshots of company communications.

They're not confident he's dead.

They're at the funeral,
didn't see a body.

So, this is
something I came up with.

So this is a full theory.

There is this stuff is known
as Haitian zombie powder.

So witch doctors in Haiti, what
they do is they'll give you this drug

which makes you appear dead for
up to a few days until you get the cure.

The conspiracy theorists on the
Internet are like, "he's definitely alive."

Like, no, everyone is like,
"we don't know if he's dead.

We don't know if
he's alive. Flip a coin."

The rumors
were quite rampant

that perhaps he had
faked his own death.

People have dug
up old news reports

from other parts of India
with fake death rings.

To me it wasn't so much being
driven by conflicting hypothesis,

so much as it was kind
of the thrill of the chase.

It was my assignment to
go to Jaipur and try to piece together

what happened
in his final hours.

The first task was to
find the death certificate.

We hopped in an auto rickshaw

and made it to the registrar's
office, which was small.

There were desks and shelves
that were just stacked full of papers.

And, uh, the next thing we know,

they had pulled up the
actual death certificate

and they said, "would you like
a copy?" And we said, "sure."

And I just remember, I was
working with the local journalists

who speaks Hindi,
a local fixer, um,

and just high fiving like,
"wow, this is great. We got it!"

You know? "This is happening!"

The death certificate had
his name spelled wrong.

It was cottan with c-o-t-t-a-n.

That death certificate came from
the official computer of the registrar,

and it confirmed the
address of the deceased

at the time of death was,
uh, the oberoi rajvilas hotel,

which is the most
expensive hotel in the city.

We got in another auto rickshaw,

and we traipsed across
the city to the oberoi rajvilas.

This place was built sort
of as a modern day palace.

Very, very large, sort
of verdant grounds.

It's quiet, there's
peacock calls.

I'm not sure there
are that many guests

who show up at the oberoi
rajvilas in, um, in auto rickshaw.

But then eventually they
let us in and then we said,

"we'd like to speak with
the general manager."

He just said, you know, "it was
very sad what had happened"

and he didn't wanna speak about
anything else. And so that was that.

We weren't able to entirely
piece together their itinerary.

They landed in New Delhi
and then they went to Jaipur,

and we did know that their
next destination was Hyderabad.

They had said that they were
going to open an orphanage

and a picture had
emerged on Reddit

showing this orphanage.

And so the question was,
"is the orphanage real?

Does it exist?"

And indeed it did exist.

With their names
on the red sign,

their names were inside as well.

Their plans were to
spend two hours there

and turn around, uh, and leave.

Two hours was a relatively
short amount of time

to, to book for
something like that.

For me,
the big question was,

"what happened in the hospital?"

We had a statement
from the hospital,

but what we did not have was a really sort
of detailed view into what had taken place.

And so we wanted
to find the doctor.

Gerry cotten had frequent episodes
of vomiting and watery stools.

Doctors said at first they thought
it was just traveler's diarrhea,

which is very common,
of course, in India.

He said, uh, Jennifer Robertson

spent the night in
the hospital with him

and in the following day he had
been booked for an ultrasound.

As he was booked
for the ultrasound

he started experiencing what the
doctor described as restlessness

and a shortage of breath.

They were worried
about a rupture

or something else
in his intestine.

Things went downhill
very, very quickly.

He had a heart
attack. He was revived.

And he had another
heart attack and they revived him.

And then he had a third heart
attack, and they couldn't revive him.

And, uh, he died
within about 25 hours

of them touching down in Jaipur.

He died within about 25 hours
of them touching down in Jaipur.

Dramatic.

When it's coming out both ends
it's almost always an infection.

What crohn's disease is, it's when the
immune system is inappropriately turned on

and causing damage to the bowel.

From the story that
we heard it sounds

as if something
catastrophic happened

like he had a
perforation in his bowel

and then an acquired infection.

The doctor seemed quite
troubled by the whole thing.

Uh, he said he, he made clear

that he'd been running through
this again and again and again.

The doctor had
come to the conclusion

about what was the
most likely cause of death.

One of the things that
happens with crohn's disease

is this possibility
of a perforation

and that can lead
very rapidly to sepsis.

But now we're assuming
that's what happened there.

He may just had
a cardiac arrest.

It is obviously very, um,
uncommon that someone,

um, at that age without
any other cardiac

or respiratory problems

would have not
survived that event.

But if they weren't
properly resuscitated,

then certainly that...
Something like that

could've led to,
to one's demise.

I spoke
with the police.

He said, "as far
as I'm concerned,

this was a natural death.
There was no autopsy."

Why was there no autopsy, doc?

You do that in a case where there are
suspicions about what might've happened.

I actually even
showed Dr. Sharma

pictures of Gerry cotten and
said, "is this... Is this the guy?"

And he said, "yes."

And everywhere I went,

anyone that had a
record of, of Gerry cotten

had photocopies of
his passport as well.

I certainly didn't meet anyone who
thought that the death was faked.

There was a tourist
that had died and

at the time nobody had
really asked any questions.

I suppose if you look at this stripped
of all the questions that emerged later

you can look at this as just
a horrifically sad 24-48 hours,

uh, for a newly married couple.

Reputable journalists
have spoken to the doctor and so on,

and think his story is good.

But I think it would be ridiculous
not to have doubts about it.

We're talking about
quite a lot of money.

There's quite enough money to bribe
absolutely everybody in all the chain and

quadriga were not
shy about blowing cash.

I mean, it happens really quick.

He gets sick on the
8th, he's dead on the 9th.

You know, he's on a plane
back to Canada on the 10th.

Um, the services
are on the 14th.

It's, uh, apparently from
what we know closed casket.

Um, Jennifer Robertson is the
executer, so she makes that decision.

There were
a few more questions.

Uh, one was what had... what
had happened with the body?

Because it was a
closed casket funeral

and so people were asking questions
about, "was there actually a body?

What's happening?"

And so we also wanted to
speak with the embalmer.

So we walk into this
office and this woman,

Dr. Seynara is sitting there,

and we said, "hey, we're here,
you know, trying to understand

a little bit about what happened

to a Canadian man who
died here." She's like, "oh."

She's like, "yes, yes,
they brought the body here

and I refused to embalm
it." And we were like, "what?"

The embalmer thought that
the circumstances were fishy

because as she recalled a
representative of the hotel had come,

which she found very strange.

Normally the body would
come by ambulance,

normally the communication
would come directly from the hospital.

And when she asked
what had happened

she was given only a sort of a very
cursory description of what had happened.

She's like, "well, this
is very, very strange."

And so she said no.

She suggested they take the
body to the sms medical college.

It's a place where the
police are often present

and so she said,
"take the body there."

And so that's
where we went next.

We walked in and the first
thing we walk along this hall

and the first thing we see, we
see a sign for anatomy department,

which is what we're looking for

and we see this doorway
that has, uh, two skeletons,

both of which have what
appear to be ping pong balls

in the eye sockets and
on top of it there's a sign,

appears to all but made
out of human bones.

Um... which is like, "okay,
that's a little Addams family."

Then we wanted
to see the records.

So they came back with just
this very, kind of thin dossier

and it showed they had
photocopies of his passport

and it also showed the
people who had dropped off

and taken the body was
people who worked for the hotel.

Where the body had been
in between? I don't know.

I would think it would
be a very strange thing

for a luxury hotel to bring
a body onto its premises,

but there's not very much
that's normal about this story.

Nobody's seen the body.
So is this really Gerald?

Nobody really knows for sure.

I'm not convinced
he faked his death,

but I'm also not
convinced that he's dead.

I'm 80% sure that he's dead.

75% sure.

You know, people just
don't believe that he's dead.

They wanna see a
picture, they want DNA.

Lawyers want the RCMP
to exhume the body

of quadrigacx
founder Gerald cotten.

The now 76,000
creditors are pushing

the royal Canadian mounted
police to dig up Gerald's body

soon because it's already been
in the ground for over a year.

If it isn't Gerry, then

it's obvious disappear
and fake your death

and if it is Gerry, then we have to
ask could he have been attacked?

Murdered? Poisoned?

I'm here with the crew
of the deadliest catch.

It's pretty stormy out here
and the wind is really picking up.

Gerry was definitely
very paranoid

as the public face
of an exchange.

He spoke at a
couple of conferences,

and he seemed very paranoid
about getting kidnapped.

I better get inside.

The captain's orders and he
said that it's just too rough out,

I could fall overboard.

This is a
massive, massive scheme

that came unraveled
and you have to think,

how much money would
it take to kill Gerry cotten?

Would $200 million be enough?

I think Gerry is the only
one with the whole story.

There's so many
open questions, you know?

It's just a beautiful example of the
rampant fraud and scams in the industry.

People
are still convinced that,

you know, they took
the money and ran.

But I feel like after
that osc report came out

it's pretty clear that the money had
already been long spent. It's gone.

My theory is they kind
of stumbled into a real business

because it coincided
with the bitcoin boom

and they had a functioning
exchange on their hands,

but in the end Gerry treated
it like one of his old scams.

If you could interview
any one person, who would it be?

Probably Jen.

What little
they've recovered

plus all of Jennifer Robertson's

quadriga boats,
houses and so forth

will be sold and
redistributed to the creditors

and they'll get
cents on the dollar.

To find out that your husband wasn't
who you thought he was the whole time,

I mean, she gave
everything back, so...

I think the only thing she
kept was her wedding ring.

Yeah. It's sad.

We know that the whole thing
was a fraud. Who else was involved?

2016, when patryn
steps out of the picture,

did patryn step
out of the picture?

Did they talk about the
exit scam with patryn?

How much he's involved
in it? We don't know.

I don't buy the story
that the money is gone.

There's somewhere around $100
million that's just unaccounted for.

Just, you know,
sent in directions

that are difficult to
continue following.

I, uh, I think that someone still
breathing, um, has control over it

and so long as that
person continues to breathe

there's a chance that
they make mistakes.

If all of the clues
that are on the Internet,

if all the insights
come from the Internet,

then the person that's
mostly left to solve it

is someone who really,
deeply understands the Internet.

People are
looking for answers

and people want justice
and I think what most people

in the telegram group want
is not just their money back,

but they wanna
see justice served.

We cannot have a
$200 million fraud

just happen and everyone
go, "lol, whatever."

It's not just regulation,
it has to be effective regulation

and part of it is I think we need
more and better enforcement.

If someone is getting
punched or stabbed or shot,

that's going to take precedence

over somebody losing a
few dollars or many dollars,

and I understand that,

but on some level if we
never investigate these things,

if we never prosecute
these things,

they're going to keep happening.

Oh, I hope he's
alive. Yeah, I hope so.

I hope he's alive and we get
him, and we get our money back

but a perfect world, I'd like
them to find Gerry cotten

sitting on a beach
and lock him up.

Where's
the money, Gerry?

Where's the money
and will we ever know?

♪ You think I was fooling you ♪

♪ well you're only
fooling yourself ♪

♪ cause I'm gone
with the money ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪

♪ You were looking
for the code ♪

♪ now you're in the hole ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪

♪ I'm gone with the money ♪