After nearly a year of investigation and developments, we now know that QuadrigaCX was going to be a disastrous story for its customers due to the general mishandling of their funds. In the early days though, much of the blame was put on the complications caused by the death of founder Gerald Cotten. Now, customers hoping to find any thread to find more of their money are going back to that well, asking for his dead body to be dug up.
A letter from Miller Thompson LLP, lawyers of the affected customers, has requested for Cotten’s remains to be exhumed. They request that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) “conduct an exhumation and post-mortem autopsy on the body of Gerald Cotten to confirm both its identity and the cause of death given the questionable circumstances surrounding Mr. Cotten’s death and the significant losses of Affected Users.”
Are they requesting the mounties perform this autopsy to see if Cotten’s death was as the original autopsy claimed, and not some criminal conspiracy? No, not exactly. They cite “the need for certainty around the question of whether Mr. Cotten is in fact deceased.”
In February 2019, Cotten’s death was confirmed by CoinDesk when it obtained the death certificate issued by the Indian government. Cotten reportedly died while on honeymoon in that country.
The QuadrigaCX story was very confusing at that point in time. Investors thought that perhaps Cotten had been keeping customer funds in a cold storage wallet, taking the keys to retrieving them to his grave.
But in the months since, investigators have shown that Cotten’s mismanagement of customer funds was much more wide ranging. He allegedly used those funds to support his own habit of trading and gambling on cryptocurrency investments, losing most of the funds in the process. An investigation of all known QuadrigaCX wallets has revealed that there is nearly no money left to be returned to customers.
If Cotten is in fact dead, and not hiding away with millions of ill-gotten wealth, one of the last big repayments customers may ever see is the $9 million from his widow, Jennifer Robertson. That’s not nearly the $214.6 million they are owed.
Robertson does not support exhuming her deceased husband’s remains. She is reportedly “heartbroken” by the request, Global News reports. “Gerry died on Dec. 9, 2018 in India,” she said in a statement.
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