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GameChanger [Music] [Music] n welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:44
listening I am your host the captain and with me as always well forget about the
00:01:50
guy that's with me as always he's locked in my basement it's good to be seing it's good to see you thanks for
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listening thanks for telling a friend and this week we're drinking Guinness a Smooth Dark Stout that's creamy in
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texture and an afterbite that's both bitter and sweet it's malty chocy and has a subtle punch of coffee this
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classic Brew originates from Dublin Ireland although I'm told by the Irish that Guinness only lives up to its
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reputation on Irish soil regardless my dad calls it an adult milkshake and I give Guinness 4 and2 out
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of five bottle caps to everybody that filled up the fridge this week cheers and to my Irish mates I say luncha yes
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that is enough of the business grab a chair grab a beer and let's talk some true
00:03:26
[Music] crime help be find you he he he help be find you help find [Music] you [Music]
00:03:54
you Bitcoin is a digital or cryptocurrency with no Central Authority unlike with traditional government
00:04:02
issued currencies it was introduced in 2009 and there are many Mysteries surrounding the founder of the
00:04:10
technology however it seems to follow the ideas presented in a white paper by santoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin is not
00:04:19
supported by any banks or government bodies it utilizes cryptography to maintain its security there are no
00:04:28
physical coins or notes rather balances are reserved on a public Ledger with encrypted records all
00:04:35
transactions are verified by using a mass computer generated process known as mining although major and developed
00:04:43
countries including us UK and Canada allow its use official International laws regarding Bitcoin are lacking and
00:04:53
it's not considered legal tender in any country with the recent exception of Al Salvador join me and Justin from
00:05:02
Generation Y as we look into the mysterious death of cryptocurrency millionaire Gerald cotton this is true
00:05:11
crime [Music] garage how are you doing tonight Captain I'm doing well how are you
00:05:30
well I'm doing okay but it's a Red Bull and riddlin type of day I'm struggling a
00:05:35
little old RNR yes well this individual that we're going to talk about he probably took
00:05:42
some riddling I'm sure he did tonight's case is an interesting one would you call it a mysterious
00:05:51
death yes uh or maybe an unexplained death we're talking about the Unexplained death of Gerald cotton who
00:06:00
otherwise goes by uh Gary and he was running one of the or the largest crypto Exchange in Canada when somebody like
00:06:12
that passes away it's not that big of a deal but he was very young at the time so that's where some questions come in
00:06:20
among others yes he ran a crypto exchange called quadriga CX sounds like something from Star Trek
00:06:31
yeah and for anyone that doesn't know what that is I would say think of a stock exchange you know any kind of
00:06:39
exchange where you can buy and sell some type of good uh but because it's crypto
00:06:46
people kind of their brain shuts off and they don't quite understand what cryptocurrencies are I think of them as
00:06:53
stocks but you could actually use them to buy things too but do you have a better explanation Captain well his his
00:07:00
business was a little different than most because it seemed like I could go onto their website and take a $100
00:07:08
American dollars and buy $100 worth of crypto but it was not actually crypto in this case for his company I could be
00:07:18
getting this wrong but it seems to me like it was a a IOU for crypto and and that's not exactly out of the ordinary a
00:07:27
lot of crypto exchanges might not be able to fill your order immediately right so they will have
00:07:34
these little tags of IUS whatever you want to call them and fulfill them over the next few days because they might not
00:07:42
be able to do it immediately yeah but what's interesting about his model was that their company charged you to make
00:07:52
the uh transaction so once you bought the $100 and whoever sold you the $100 both had to to pay a fee so it wasn't
00:08:01
just like some scam business the the company was making millions just upon transactions and he had a pretty normal
00:08:10
life growing up and he would end up going to school for business administration at uh York University
00:08:19
School of Business his parents were antique dealers he was just a very normal nerdy guy before he started
00:08:29
dabbling in cryptocurrencies right he had a few business ventures before quadriga which
00:08:36
we'll talk about later quadria was as I said it it was a crypto exchange but in order to
00:08:46
become the largest crypto Exchange in Canada you have to legitimize yourself you have to look like you are the real
00:08:57
deal and he created this from the groundup with his business partner Michael Patron they established a board
00:09:08
of directors they had a small office at one point there's another way to make yourself look legit and that's by
00:09:17
creating fake user accounts to show that people are using your service and I know some podcasters
00:09:25
will purchase you know reviews or uh follow ERS for themselves to make themselves appear a little bit more
00:09:32
legitimized and I personally don't care if somebody does that but when it comes to a
00:09:39
exchange it might be a little disingenuous well it goes back to a couple things and one if you want to
00:09:44
know what which podcast we're talking about we're going to reveal those in a second no we're not going to do that but
00:09:51
if you go to iTunes and you see somebody's reviews that say this podcast is nice and then the next one is nice
00:10:00
podcast this podcast is neat like chances are those are fake reviews that the podcast bought also we see it all
00:10:11
the time where people buy followers on Instagram Facebook or or whatever now this practice that they're using is
00:10:20
similar to what dating websites would use so they would get these fake accounts 10 attractive females 10
00:10:27
attractive males and they would have these fake accounts going all the time so it seemed like there was a bunch of
00:10:34
people using their site like Justin says maybe that's okay and maybe you don't frown upon on that too much on a
00:10:42
dating site especially if it's free but on a cryptocurrency website where they're charging you per transaction to
00:10:50
me that seems a little shady up front I I agree uh because if you are legit then
00:10:57
you know maybe you can go out on Yelp or Google reviews and give yourself some good reviews but some of these fake
00:11:05
accounts were like R2D2 or Mickey Mouse I it was blatant that they weren't real that's that's uh True Crime garage's
00:11:13
number one fan R2D2 he's partnered up with this Michael guy and things are going pretty well
00:11:24
when they first started out they were actually a like over over the counter exchange kind of like an ATM where you
00:11:33
where you could like put your money in own some Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency and then you could
00:11:40
withdraw money but that didn't really take off so they took this whole thing online which is the normal thing to do
00:11:48
with cryptocurrencies that all happened they established the company in 2013 and by
00:11:55
2014 it was reported that they were doing like $7.9 million in exchanges a day and by
00:12:06
2017 they were doing over a billion dollars in transfers and exchanges a day wow and like I said they are charging
00:12:14
they are charging their users for every transaction and it might be just fractions of pennies but still that adds
00:12:22
up if I didn't mention it Captain he's running this entire thing from his oh MacBook Pro
00:12:29
when you hear this it seems so made up and when you start thinking of the idea of like a a Ponzi scheme or something
00:12:37
like that to me a company that is doing transactions like you said billions of dollars I'm expecting them to have a
00:12:46
campus somewhere multiple buildings tons of employees once you find out that Gary
00:12:52
is running the whole operation on his MacBook is it was it even a MacBook Pro I've read it both ways I don't think it
00:13:01
really matters though hey no that to me it's like I give him a little more Kudos
00:13:06
if it's just a Macbook he went cheap route could you imagine if your laptop broke and you had
00:13:13
to go to the Genius Bar and deal with one of those guys to try to get your billion dooll company back up and
00:13:19
running yeah and could you could you try to fix this before lunch because we're losing billions well obviously business
00:13:28
is good uh his business partner Michael he's uh got a love for expensive cars and a lot
00:13:36
of luxurious things in life and at this time you know from 2014 to 2017 crypto is booming the prices are going up
00:13:45
Bitcoin is gone from you know just thousands of dollars up to $10,000 for one coin right but in 2017
00:13:57
things start to take a hit crypto's value is tanking so business investors would do they start to try to withdraw
00:14:05
their money and normally you can just put in you know sell your crypto put in the
00:14:12
withdrawal form and within 48 hours you're going to have your money and 48 hours I would say would be a long wait
00:14:20
time right because usually at least in today's time you can have it pretty instantaneously if not within hours
00:14:28
maybe in 2017 that process wasn't quite as panned out I mean when crypto first started
00:14:37
back in the day it was hard to buy crypto there wasn't all of these exchanges and apps on your phone that
00:14:43
you could buy you had to go to some shady sites to get it so investors are trying to withdraw they're not getting
00:14:49
any response they're emailing customer service who's then telling them to open a trouble ticket then their treble
00:14:56
tickets have an SLA or a you know service agreement time they're not hearing back some of them are waiting
00:15:03
months so people are upset the investors who have hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars wrapped up in this
00:15:13
are going online going on Reddit complaining about this and even starting to file lawsuits this is one of the
00:15:21
things I heard that was that made their company unique is that it seems like other companies you would have to almost
00:15:28
like apply to get your money out and there's was supposed to be more like readily available so the fact that once
00:15:37
people started trying to pull their money and they didn't have these stipulations in place that screwed them
00:15:44
from the get-go and they had what they're what we call third- party processors and the only way I can
00:15:51
explain this is if you go to say you know McDonald's or Starbucks when you pay for your coffee they're point a
00:15:58
sales machine is probably owned by a third party who's going to process your credit card and do all those things well
00:16:05
they have third party processors one's called crypto Capital these processors take a fee also but with all of this
00:16:15
legal rambling going on quadria is blaming their third-party processors and blaming some of the banks they use for
00:16:25
the Slowdown right this is just point the fingers and don't blame us they also have uh one of their fund holders is
00:16:34
called custodian and they had I think $28 million in funds in quadria saying no they're they have our funds and we
00:16:46
can't pay you until they pay us right now let's go back for a second because back to these fake accounts right did
00:16:55
you see a breakdown on on how they think that the company started kind of getting
00:17:00
upside down no go ahead and explain it yeah so one of the things that they were doing is like but like we said he's
00:17:07
running the whole company from his laptop what we should say is before Gary cotton gets involved
00:17:16
I don't like calling him Gary I'm going to call him Gerald yeah it's fine old Gerald cotton gets involved they did
00:17:21
have some buildings they did have a few employees but once he got involved no offices no nothing just his laptop well
00:17:28
he could go on in the middle of the night and just basically create like a fake thousand Bitcoins and then he could
00:17:37
start selling those to people and every time he's selling you know 100 bucks here 50 bucks here their companies
00:17:45
making money off those transactions so he would do this and he actually created I think multiple fake people and I don't
00:17:52
even know if his business partners knew he was doing this but it reminds me of Shaw Shank Redemption when you find out
00:17:59
that Andy defrain created a fake guy and started funing a bunch of money to that
00:18:04
account so but then what happens is if let's say we have a million dollars in in the pot and I start adding money
00:18:12
that's was never there and now people are buying that eventually if I keep doing that once people go to take their
00:18:20
money there's not going to be enough money in the pot you have to rob Peter to pay Paul the question then becomes to
00:18:26
me for for these guys in and his you know Michael his his business partner why were they doing this because they
00:18:33
were making millions just off of transactions cryptocurrency is like David Copperfield right it's like it's
00:18:42
magic it's we can't see it can't touch it but it's so funny to me that these guys that are getting into these
00:18:50
cryptocurrencies like you were saying Michael for example had a love of expensive cars so they're using using
00:18:58
this fake entity basically and making money off this fake entity to buy actual material things I just kind of find that
00:19:07
a little ironic regardless of whether this business is legitimate or not that's actually how a lot of places
00:19:15
function it's almost like fake it till you make it right and you know if he can create fake Bitcoins to sell and dump
00:19:25
them into the pool I mean that's just like the Federal Reserve just printed off more
00:19:29
money it's not that different to me but I could be off base there well no I still think it's hilarious that they're
00:19:35
called the Federal Reserve they're not federal at all there is clever name there're is federal as Federal Express
00:19:46
exactly at the time where these lawsuits and things are happening his business partner Michael actually steps down and
00:19:55
is just a shareholder in the company at that point point and Gerald is running the show Gerald at this point has his
00:20:05
long-term girlfriend Jennifer Robertson he thinks that this is a good time to marry Jennifer make her the only
00:20:15
employee listed at the company they're going to Honeymoon in India they had their eye on like uh
00:20:24
sponsoring a orphanage for children in India I think there was 12 kids at this orphanage and you know that's nice it's
00:20:34
you know they're trying to be giving and uh he walked in and he said I'll buy all
00:20:39
12 children no I'll take I'll take all 12 uh but they're trying to be philanthropists with their money
00:20:49
and they get married they plan this trip to India for their honeymoon and they're
00:20:55
going to go there and adopt to or you know sponsor this orphanage do you know when they got married so they end up
00:21:03
getting married June of 2018 I question that because right now the company appears to be in turmoil in
00:21:13
legal turmoil with all these lawsuits and the inability to pay off a lot of the investors yeah but when things
00:21:21
aren't going good in life just get married it fixes everything yeah and they're going to honeymoon in India yeah
00:21:29
but here's what's weird though is they get married in June they're basically waiting
00:21:35
till December to Honeymoon yeah or they or they honeymooning for like months and
00:21:43
months well they they wait a little bit and you know because you know sometimes you have to save up money for that
00:21:49
honeymoon right yeah when you're when you're running a billion dollar company off your MacBook guess what I'm going to
00:21:56
go buy this weekend a Macbook try to figure out how to start a billion dollar company yeah who's with
00:22:05
me one of the interesting things about this case well maybe not interesting is the right word but maybe confusing and
00:22:14
maybe one of the reasons why people start questioning everything that you hear about Gerald cotton is there's
00:22:22
mixed reports just like we said they got married in June but they don't take their honeymoon till
00:22:28
a few months later and it doesn't there's conflicting stories on when their honeymoon actually started and
00:22:36
then there's conflicting stories on how many how many days was Gerald in India before he got sick and and went to the
00:22:44
hospital some Reports say a week some Reports say two days yeah I found that he went with his wife they checked in at
00:22:53
the hotel and they went to a fondue party or a fondue restaurant now I know do you fondue I don't fondue myself I'm
00:23:04
not the biggest fan uh well maybe you'd be a happier person if you did dipping things in
00:23:10
cheese always makes them better Gerald cotton was known to have Crohn's disease okay which is I guess uh really bad I
00:23:23
IBS it causes you great gastral intes problems it's it's not something that we should take lightly it's not something
00:23:34
that I I think oh it just had Crohn's disease that was it but look it could get very bad and and depending on the
00:23:42
the type of flare up that the individual would have you know I've had family members and stuff that have been
00:23:48
hospitalized because of it so it's it's very it can be very serious I don't know
00:23:54
how deadly it is I don't know how many people will die from a flare up Gerald gets to India and some Reports say
00:24:03
within 24 hours he's not only gone to the hospital for a flare up but he's become septic
00:24:14
and he dies from complications you know and I guess my whole problem is you know if you think
00:24:21
okay you have Crohn's disease you're going to India maybe you go to a street vendor and you order something that
00:24:27
looks like meat on a stick and I think that stuff's great by the way I love Street vendors myself I love taco trucks
00:24:34
but the whole stereotype is he ate something bad in India and that caused him this distress but if we're going off
00:24:43
the time frame of within two days of him arriving did he even have time to eat anything or was this flare up happening
00:24:52
on the plane are you saying he he was doing a 4our fast no but you I I get what you're saying
00:25:00
it's like saying like I have a bad stomach so when I go to Mexico the first thing I do is drink a gallon of water
00:25:06
you know you're not supposed to do that yeah um so it's yeah it's very strange um but here here's one of the things
00:25:14
that I kind of Wonder his company's there's bad things happening in the company there's illegal things
00:25:23
now happening in the company you are doing some of those illegal things you are creating fake
00:25:32
characters and selling money that's doesn't exist on in your business I wonder because of the Crohn's disease if he
00:25:42
didn't also have like some ulcers and some other stuff that was going on due to stress and that maybe he wasn't aware
00:25:52
of because he's feeling like certain types of pain and certain but he's he's he's dismissing
00:25:58
that as his Crohn's disease it's very possible I agree I would be stressed out just the fact that I'm running the
00:26:05
company off of a Macbook he's at this hospital he is declared dead his wife now organizes or you know sets up
00:26:19
transport for his body to be transported I guess back to the hotel so they can find somebody to
00:26:28
not really do an autopsy but do embalming because they've already got the uh diagnosis from the doctor at the
00:26:37
hospital that he died from like acute gastral intestinal problems right so they find an embalmer they take his body
00:26:47
there this embalmer says hey he didn't come directly from the hospital he's been moved around you didn't follow
00:26:55
protocol I'm not going to to unalm him so she takes his body back and they find a medical school Med students to do the
00:27:06
embalming of his body this is India maybe there is protocols and procedures there's language barriers you know maybe
00:27:15
this is legit but it seems like there's a lot of paperwork and moving around of his
00:27:23
body at this point before she's able to get him inomed and then arrange transport for him to go
00:27:30
back to Canada to Nova Scotia where they live and the uh 12 children at the orphanage they're left high and dry if I
00:27:38
was one of those kids in that class i' go you liar you told me I was getting new shoes not and that happens on
00:27:46
December 8th is when he goes to the hospital nobody knows he's dead there's no announcements made
00:27:55
nothing for a month quadriga is still business as usual people are still depositing money into
00:28:04
it still trying to do their exchanges everything they have no clue but it's a month later that his wife posts it's a
00:28:15
sad day my husband Gerald cotton has passed away you [Music] you this show is sponsored by better
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garage Rosetta Stone is the language learning program with a lasting impact I've been using their rap to learn
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00:31:02
listening cheers normally cheers to the crispy Colonel but uh I'm cheersing to you and uh this is recorded before we
00:31:13
went to the UK yes but I'm sure we're going to have a couple drinks in the UK so I'm sure we will that's going to be a
00:31:20
fun time so let me try to wrap my head around all this they go to India they're there less than 48 hours
00:31:27
he goes to the hospital that's not to me that doesn't seem crazy with when you find out that
00:31:34
he has Chron's Disease seems like something that's possible but then he dies and they won't inbomb the body and
00:31:45
they have to do this loop around where they get some college students to do it or they
00:31:52
actually it was the little kids that they're trying to sponsor they're like we're going to have you and bomb this
00:31:57
body they ship the body back to Canada and she doesn't tell any of his family members she just post it
00:32:06
online yeah Gerald had parents right have you seen any reports of them talking about his death not a lot
00:32:16
trying to find anything about it for that month period of time between his actual death and her announcement I
00:32:26
didn't find anything after that announcement you can find some some quotes uh and whatnot but at
00:32:34
that point it's not exactly it just doesn't seem to be known by anyone or reported by anyone I'm trying to play
00:32:42
Devil's Advocate cuz I'm trying to go okay well if he's the only one really running the company and we announc now
00:32:49
that he died and maybe look we don't even know at this point if she can get into his computer that is running the
00:32:56
whole company well we'll get to that we will get to that I'm just saying that like yes it's a little fishy that she
00:33:04
doesn't announce it for a month but you wonder is there some complications because he's running this business by
00:33:11
himself where they didn't want to they maybe they didn't want a run on their server you know and and have all the
00:33:18
money disappear yeah but one of the things and I don't know if you want to get to this
00:33:24
now but they were together for a long time years before they got married but before they went to India few weeks
00:33:33
before they went to India Gerald changes his whole will yeah he's leaving a lot of his stuff to his
00:33:42
wife uh they had two cute little Chihuahua he even leaves like it's reported that he leaves
00:33:50
$100,000 to the dogs do we know what the Chihuahua's names are I don't I well Nick would have known you can just
00:34:00
imagine at this point this has caused complete and utter turmoil with the investors yeah and they're doubling down
00:34:10
on coming after this company and trying to get their money the Canada Revenue Agency and their security and policies
00:34:21
uh folks are now coming after this company they're finding that a lot of these accounts were fake
00:34:32
they're finding that Gerald had communicated under false aliases to different organizations they're finding that the
00:34:45
hospital in India where he was declared dead well the chairman who ran that hospital had actually been convicted of
00:34:58
fraud two months prior oh surprise to Gerald's death surprise surprise my first question was it was it even a real
00:35:07
hospital I mean I don't live there I have never stepped foot in the place but according to the documents sure it's a
00:35:16
real Hospital ran by fake doctors this government agency comes after Jennifer and says all right you need to hand over
00:35:24
his laptop you need to hand over everything related to the company including all the passwords and
00:35:30
passphrases to access it and what does Jennifer say I don't have them the own the sole owner and proprietor of this
00:35:38
company who is delegated only you know who is delegated all of his stuff to his wife who is the only employee of the
00:35:47
company right he dies and she doesn't have a single password I have a hard time trusting people when I see that
00:35:53
they have a password pass code on their phone like what are you trying to hide why do
00:36:00
you why does everybody in this world need a passcode I wonder with this laptop and this makes a difference if it
00:36:07
it's a Macbook or a MacBook Pro because the MacBook Pro has like the finger identifier so they could chop his finger
00:36:15
off and she could like carry that around on a keychain and use it to unlock the laptop
00:36:23
they find that he had made several transfers or deposits of money from the company to personal accounts ranging
00:36:35
from a hundred million to tens of millions of dollars right before his death and it said that his laptop
00:36:46
alone had $250 million in crypto locked up on it Jesus quarter trillion dollars now he
00:36:58
was buying some stuff he I don't think he was known to buy sports cars or anything like that but he he did buy
00:37:06
some properties and he bought a $600,000 yacht like hey that's baller money right
00:37:17
yeah I'm not really you know I'm just I'm just not really into cars I buy a yacht he didn't even know how to sale at
00:37:25
the time of this person right he literally had to take sailing lessons you know normally when you teach
00:37:32
your kid how to drive a stick you you let them figure it out on like a Honda Civic from you know the 1980s you you
00:37:39
don't get them a Ferrari to figure out how to drive a stick but here he is he's got all the money in the world he can do
00:37:47
whatever he buys a $600,000 yacht who does he think he is Conor McGregor they find out that his wife
00:37:56
Jennifer Robinson she's changed her name four times now she had been married and divorced so
00:38:06
some of those name changes could be explained but well how many times was she married I mean look if you're married
00:38:15
four times and you change your name four times fine right wasn't four times but why are you just changing your name for
00:38:22
no reason as we can assume the Canadian government and law law enforcement is not happy with this so they get search
00:38:32
warrants and they raid his properties they're able to recover some hard drives they're able to recover some of the
00:38:41
funds that were missing ernston young had uh the ability to do you know recovery
00:38:50
on these drives and break some of the uh encryptions I guess they found that an account for someone named Chris Marque
00:39:02
had transactions in excess of $220 million that's a lot of money but who is Chris
00:39:10
Marque exactly I mean I know who he is but would you want to tell the listeners who he is oh go go ahead go ahead sorry
00:39:18
so this is also Gerald yeah this is an alias and and so you said how repeat that number again
00:39:27
I just want that to sink in for everybody in excess of$ 220 million of cryptocurrency to a fake
00:39:37
person that is the richest fake person I've ever I've ever heard of if you had a fake person right that you're going to
00:39:45
give millions of dollars to what would you name him do you have a name you'd go by like Batman or the
00:39:53
captain TCG captain uh just to get and then I was arrested now I would I would go by uh Andy Kaufman that would
00:40:03
be perfect and every now and then when I'm at a bar I'll say I like to say when they go well what's your real name I say
00:40:11
Andy Koffman or I'll say um Bon Scott they find that he didn't do his personal property tax returns for 2014 2015 or
00:40:24
2017 and in 2016 when he actually did file he showed that he didn't make any profit well In fairness all all that
00:40:33
profit was going to his is the fake person he created then add insult to injury they're able to recover some of
00:40:40
these funds from these hard drives but remember those third-party processors I was talking about they're saying hey
00:40:49
they still owe us money and you need to give us any of those funds recovered and
00:40:55
those third party processes are trying to recover those funds as opposed to those funds going back to the actual
00:41:02
individuals the investors now what's what's going on with his body so he was emomed by
00:41:09
medical students he was sent back to Nova Scotia and they buried him right away well guess
00:41:16
what give me a shovel let's dig up his dead [Music] bones and and see what he has to say for
00:41:25
himself the investors are pressuring the government to exume his body and do a DNA test yeah there was a court hearing
00:41:34
I believe last year or two years ago now um the only thing I could find and maybe
00:41:44
you found something better than me uh it seemed as if whatever hearing that they
00:41:50
had where it seemed like they're going to win the hearing pretty easily but then that's been like delayed now
00:41:57
because of covid so I I don't know actually where the investors stand on the digging up the dead
00:42:07
bones well when there's over a quarter trillion dollars at hand I'm sure they're not going to give up anytime
00:42:15
soon yeah it's sad that we you know this should be a simple I wish the world worked like take any judge right
00:42:27
and you go look what what do we know for certain we know that Gerald was scamming
00:42:34
people out of his money therefore he was doing something illegal therefore he'd become a prisoner right so in a sense he
00:42:42
becomes property of the state so I do not feel bad for him his wife or any of his family members that were going to
00:42:52
dig him up to get answers you know sometimes when they want to dig somebody up I go hey hey they
00:43:01
they didn't do anything wrong we should stop you know especially these cases where it's like they dig up the body
00:43:07
multiple times and do multiple autopsies and it's like by the third autopsy it's
00:43:12
like can you even buy anything that the doctor is saying because at that point the body is so
00:43:20
mutilated but in this case we would know is there is there really a person there or is this guy off somewhere else
00:43:29
and then he becomes a fugitive we talked about other partners in crime here like
00:43:37
his uh his buddy Michael uh yeah Patron now he and Michael claimed that they'd only known each other for about five
00:43:47
years at the time that this happened so you know if you take they started the company in you know 2013 is and and then
00:43:56
he dies in 2018 you know that's about a 5year time but as further investigations into
00:44:05
this Michael guy goes they find that Michael used to run a website that was the first kind of shady
00:44:15
crypto exchange website he created a website called Talk gold and Gerald as a teenager went and joined this website
00:44:26
that's where he met Michael they would go on to create other sites I think one was called SNS
00:44:37
Investments and this had a crypto I guess currency called Midas gold and it was run by
00:44:48
a I use bank with air quotes called Liberty reserve and Liberty reserve was allegedly ran by an American in Costa
00:45:02
Rica who laundered money so you take your drug money you take your human trafficking money yes
00:45:12
you go to this website you buy this Midas gold a second can you tell me that website again so I can write it down
00:45:19
it's not there anymore so you're saying so now what should I do with my drug money so they
00:45:26
there and they buy this Midas gold which think it's processed however through Liberty
00:45:34
reserve who then would turn around convert it back into Fiat cash for a fee hand it back to
00:45:44
you essentially laundering the money that's awesome now Liberty reserve it's like
00:45:51
real life Ozark right yeah exactly but it's all digital online digital Reserve did not keep any
00:46:00
records of their clients any kind of database so you could track who was buying this and withdrawing it yeah I'm
00:46:08
going to call my call my company Liberty federal financial responsibly conservative
00:46:19
Reserve Liberty reserve was reported to have over 5 million users and over 8 billion in assets
00:46:26
so this is uh so basically what you're saying is investigators have now figured out that they they this scheme this was
00:46:36
a scheme all along and that they knew that they were going to like no matter it's almost like they came up
00:46:44
with this scheme and they didn't expect it to blow up and become somewhat legitimate and it
00:46:50
did and that actually throws a wrench into their plan of just having a a cam service because quadria C quadriga
00:47:01
CX was platformed on Liberty reserve my god wow Michael Patron I don't know what his real name
00:47:15
was because he was actually arrested for identity fraud as Omar danani what's with
00:47:23
everybody changing their names I just don't trust people that don't use their real
00:47:28
name you know those use your real name be honest people says the captain I have a boat I
00:47:37
have a yacht 600,000 $600 million yacht I'm just messing with you Gerald which is using aliases creating fake
00:47:49
accounts fake people we have Michael his partner using aliases creating fake individual we have his wife that has
00:47:58
changed her name multiple times some like like we said if you get married and divorced and you can you'll change your
00:48:05
name there and and you'll change your name coming back but it's still strange that she's changed her name multiple
00:48:11
times I think that these investors are very justified in their complete and utter disbelief that Gerald cotton has
00:48:23
died but just one more detail for you his name is Gerald cotton his last name is spelled c
00:48:30
tteen on his death certificate it's spelled c TT an he does have stomach issues that's why I'm like it's not
00:48:39
impossible that an with the stress that he look and I don't feel bad for him because he is the one that put
00:48:47
the stress on him I wouldn't put it past him that something bad happened or or or
00:48:55
maybe he even like committed suicide and for whatever reason his wife is covering it up because if if he
00:49:04
committed suicide maybe she wouldn't get certain things so I want to put it past
00:49:09
him that the the the death is not real not saying it is real I'm just saying it's possible people die in their 30s
00:49:18
people die from stress related complications especially with somebody that has something look Crohn's
00:49:29
dis disease normally will not cause death but if you're super stressed out because you're creating fake people and
00:49:36
you're creating fake money and you have millions and millions of dollars that are technically not real and millions
00:49:43
and millions of dollars that you owe to people and you don't have the money to fund
00:49:48
that because you just bought a giant yacht this can cause some stress issu so it's possible that he he could have
00:49:59
died it's I'm leaning towards no he didn't I would but I would bet my cryp my cryptocurrency on the
00:50:10
fact that he's still alive now what's interesting though is in this case as as opposed to so many other mysterious
00:50:18
deaths or Unexplained Mysteries I think we're going to get answers to this because if they finally
00:50:27
get a judge to sign off to have his body exhumed we'll know and at that point it's either a
00:50:38
there's not going to be a body in that grave B there'll be somebody else's body in that grave or nobody right you think
00:50:45
it's you now okay now if we're going to bet cryptocurrency I'm betting he's not there right but I'm also also betting
00:50:55
that there's just not a body and here's where I think he's screwed up I don't mind so much that the death certificate
00:51:03
has like the name spelled wrong because he was in a different country here's what gets me cuz Gerald doesn't seem
00:51:10
like a dumb guy so so here's here's my issue and this is the part that pulls me back and
00:51:19
now if you said okay you have to bet right I would bet that he's not in that grave
00:51:25
but if you said you don't have to bet all of the money there's a 10% 15% chance that I go this is real he
00:51:35
actually died stress whatever and the proof is he could have been cremated right and I don't even know like how
00:51:46
well like DNA test work on ashes so as long as I think you could get like human remains you could come
00:51:56
back and go well here it is think about how easy that would be yeah like what why wasn't he cremated because that
00:52:04
would have cleared the Slate here like he was buried so there's still quote unquote evidence of his existence if she
00:52:13
would have had him cremated we wouldn't really be having this conversation because I don't know if they could
00:52:18
actually do but that's what I'm saying they dig up the body he's there I think maybe that's the tell
00:52:26
that you know and and maybe his family would say I don't know I'm just saying like
00:52:31
it's not that it's not that hard for I mean we haven't I mean I've never sat around and thought about faking my death
00:52:39
but but I'm going hey you go to India you die from this uh the stomach issues you have me
00:52:46
cremated but because that didn't happen like you said there is evidence so that that is that that little bit that goes
00:52:54
maybe this is just what happened it's possible I wonder if uh you know his buddy
00:53:04
Michael what if he had him killed yeah but he would have to be in cahoot with I me
00:53:10
there's the wife right you would think unless it was a plan just gone horribly wrong like I'm G to kill him and get all
00:53:19
the crypto and then kill the wife and get the rest of the stuff or just get the crypto and take off I don't know I
00:53:26
mean there's there's some theories there of what could have happened I'm more or less he did this he
00:53:35
faked his own death and he took off or like you said he actually died of natural causes like the official story
00:53:42
says but with the totality of evidence here the totality of his just criminal behavior from a teenager on and every
00:53:54
single person he engaged with in their Shady Behavior I just I can't accept that this is real because it would be
00:54:02
the worst possible timing and the worst possible planning of getting married going on a honeymoon in the middle of
00:54:12
all of this and then dying right in the middle of it it's like what would the chances of that but you're in agreeance
00:54:17
with me where you say the big mistake in this whole plan would be not to be cremated
00:54:25
and you and I just wonder maybe there is some kind of background with his family
00:54:30
with religious or whatever that that was an option in his plan and I think that there'll be a Manhunt for him on a scale
00:54:43
that uh we've never seen before and I if I was one of those you know multi-million are but you're just not
00:54:51
telling us the truth if Justin's even your real name yeah if if I was you bet your ass I
00:55:01
would be hiring some head hunters to go find him and there's so much more to this case I mean we tried to fit
00:55:07
everything we could into you know an hour but you can go down the rabbit hole there is so many more details so many
00:55:16
more schemes P Ponzi schemes and and criminal acts that I just didn't even feel the need to mention because yeah I
00:55:25
wouldn't be surprised if they don't make some kind of documentary out of this cuz
00:55:31
there's enough meat on the bones to to chew on this one for a long time I would love to hear what your listeners think
00:55:39
did this guy die of natural causes or do you think he's uh sitting on some beach
00:55:45
sipping on uh an expensive Margarita yeah so tell us your thoughts at true Crim garage.com click on the
00:55:54
blog and let us know what you think Justin it's always so great to hang out with you thanks so much for joining us
00:56:01
here in the garage and I look forward to hanging out no problem in London with you awesome it's been my honor thank you
00:56:09
so much [Music] cheers help find you thank you so much for joining us here in the garage for everything True Crime
00:56:30
Check out true Crim garage.com and make sure you go and listen to Generation Y this week with Nick and Aaron or the
00:56:39
crispy Colonel and Aaron and you can check Generation Y out wherever you listen to podcast until next week be
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