The death of the founder of the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotten, earlier this year has resurfaced in the news as Miller Thomson LLP has requested the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to conduct postmortem autopsy on the body.
Legal representatives of consumers of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange have requested the police and other associated authorities to exhume the body of the deceased founder of the Canada-based crypto company. Lawyers have called for the body’s postmortem autopsy, claiming that under the questionable circumstances of his death last year, efforts are made to recover Bitcoin(BTC)trade funds that amount to $190 million that was stored with the online trading platform and is now lost.
They have also requested that the exhumation to be conducted within a brief time frame, before spring of 2020, pointing out to concerns regarding decomposition. Gerald Cotten died on his honeymoon in Jaipur, India at the age of 30 due to complications related to Crohn’s disease. After his body was sent back to Canada, his funeral took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
No Access to the Crypto Exchange’s Funds
After the tragic incident of the death of QuadrigaCX’s founder, nearly 80,000 customers of Canada’s biggest and most popular cryptocurrency exchange at the time reported that they were not able to access their cryptocurrency wallets and make withdraws, which totaled at almost $190 million.
Since Cotten was the only person who had the access and the permissions required to obtain the company’s crypto funds, QuadrigaCX was unable to do so. Even Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson, who had his laptop was unable to access the information required.
She said in a court filing that the computer from which Gerald Cotten conducted the operations for the business of company is encrypted and she does not possess the password or the recovery key and despite the thorough searches, she has not been able to find them anywhere.
The news about missing cryptocurrency funds had sparked a speculation that Cotten might still be alive; hence, in the letter addressed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the lawyers reinforced the need for certainty regarding the question whether Gerry Cotten was indeed deceased. Ernst and Young, the accounting firm auditing the bankrupt company through the process found out that Cotten used customer funds to conduct money-losing trades.
The also discovered that more of the company’s money was used for the lavish lifestyle of the couple which included private jets and expensive vehicles. The firm was able to recover $24 million in fiat cash and $9 million in digital assets that were under the possession of Jennifer Robertson.
