Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday December 18 2019, @05:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the conspiracy-theory-or-an-effective-ruse dept.

Put the crypt into cryptocoin: Amid grave concerns, lawyers to literally dig into exchange exec who died owing $190m

A group of aggrieved crypto-coin investors want to exhume the corpse of a digital money exchange boss in a bid to find their missing millions.

Lawyers representing the out-of-pocket Quadriga CX punters have filed a request [PDF] to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to dig up and examine the body of Gerald Cotten, the deceased CEO of the now-defunct exchange.

In the letter, attorneys from law firm Miller Thomson ask that a detailed autopsy be performed in order to determine the exact cause of death for Cotten, who is interred at a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

[...] Cotten is the exec who singlehandedly caused the crash of the Quadriga CX exchange late last year when, while apparently traveling in India, he was said to have died of complications related to Crohn's disease.

How? He apparently had the only copy of the passwords for the wallets where the funds (about $190 million) were held. That was the end for the Quadriga CX exchange. It was later discovered that Cotten had already drained the wallets to personal accounts. Given the circumstances of the death and the handling of the funds, there is a question that the death might have been faked.

It is hoped the exhumation and autopsy will clearly identify the body as actually being that of Cotten and thus end speculations of a possible ruse.

Previously:

Laptop of Crypto-Exchange Owner who Died with Keys to $137m Finally Cracked
Digital Exchange Loses $137M as Founder Takes Passwords to the Grave

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/16/dead_coin_exec_exhumation/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @08:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @08:58PM (#933897)

    So are you saying that all the officials in India have such integrity that absolutely none of them would accept a $1 million USD bribe to fake a death.

    That Mr. Cotten did indeed die is a certainty among police and medical professionals in India, and The Globe reviewed hotel, hospital and embalming records that give no suggestion of anything abnormal. Still, Mr. Cotten died under circumstances that Dr. Sharma and a local embalmer – who refused to prepare his body for transport from India – found unusual, and the details The Globe uncovered about his final hours only add to the enigma surrounding Mr. Cotten. Story continues below advertisement Mr. Cotten and Ms. Robertson checked in at 6:10 p.m.

    I'd say that it's far from settled based on the link you gave.

    Seeing how the person "embezzled" (?) $190 million briefly before dying in an odd way in an odd place, I think there is definitely a smell-test suspicion which warrants further investigations. At least in my opinion.