Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King is the latest true crime documentary to hit Netflix. Hot on the heels of the bad vegan and tinder scammer, true crime enthusiasts can’t get enough of hustlers, swindlers, and multi-million dollar scams.
Trust No One tells the shocking story of gerald ‘gerry’ cotten, charting his rise to the top of bitcoin and his dramatic fall, leaving his legacy tarnished. So who is Gerry Cotton and where is he now? newsweek has everything you need to know.
Reading: Bitcoin gerry cotten
who is gerald ‘gerry’ cotton?
gerald cotten was the founder of quadriga cx, once the largest cryptocurrency exchange in canada.
In December 2018, cotten died during his honeymoon with his wife, jennifer robertson, in jaipur, india. he was 30 years old.
According to an investigation by Globe and Canada Post, Cotten died of complications related to Crohn’s disease and Robertson returned to Canada with his body.
when bitcoin started crashing before cotten’s death and people tried to withdraw their money in one fell swoop, cotten’s company was on its way to losing millions of dollars.
cotten had supposedly told his wife that he would create a mechanism that would allow her to access all of her crypto-related passwords, but he never did.
At the time of his death, he had more than 250 million Canadian dollars [200 million dollars] and the passwords to the quadriga accounts. according to the netflix documentary, at least 110,000 customers were affected.
Without anyone knowing the passwords to cotten’s accounts, none of quadriga’s funds (kept in cold, offline wallets) could be used to pay its users.
After an investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission, Quadriga CX was found to be essentially a “ponzi scheme”. The investigation found that cotten had created “fake quadriga accounts, used fake funds, and made real trades, betting on the value of the cryptocurrency.”
In its report, the Ontario Securities Commission recorded: “The downfall of crypto asset trading platform Quadriga CX (Quadriga) was the result of fraud committed by Quadriga co-founder and CEO Gerald cotten.”
a report by auditor ernst & youth also found funds transferred to cotten personally and to other parties. in total there were c$33 million in missing funds, reports the bbc.
His widow has stated that she had no idea he was running a scam.
in an interview with the globe and mail, robertson said: “i love the gerry i met. i don’t know who this other person is, but he has let me down so much.”
where is gerry ‘gerry’ cotton now?
since cotten’s death, there have been numerous rumors and conspiracy theories that he is still alive.
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Suspicion was fueled by her name being misspelled on her death certificate and by the fact that she had prepared her will just days before her honeymoon.
as heard in confidence no one, some quadriga investors believed cotten faked his own death and fled with millions as part of an “exit scam”, others believed his face had been altered by a plastic surgeon and he was no longer recognizable .
some thought he was on the move, using different names, while others suspected that if he was dead, he was murdered or had taken his own life.
At one point, it was requested that cotten’s grave be exhumed for an autopsy to be performed on the body “to confirm both his identity and cause of death.”
Others accused his wife, Robertson, of being involved in his death and/or disappearance, an accusation that pushed her to attempt suicide, he shared with the world and the mail.
All theories are unproven and Cotton is believed to have died in December 2018.
in 2019, quadriga ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy.
Trust No One: The Search for the King of Crypto is now streaming on Netflix.
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