QuadrigaCX Founder's Fake Death

A story about QuadrigaCX, Canada's largest crypto exchange, where the founder allegedly faked his death and disappeared with hundreds of millions in customer funds.

"Back in 2013-2015, this guy in Canada creates a bitcoin exchange called QuadrigaCX. Bitcoin was pretty green at the time, having its first run up to $1,000. He creates this exchange because it was really hard to buy cryptocurrency in Canada. QuadrigaCX becomes the largest exchange in Canada.

One day, people go to Quadriga.com and the website is just gone - showing a 404 page. $215 million of crypto is unaccounted for. Then news comes out that the founder died suddenly on a trip to India, and he had the private keys to the crypto. No one else knew the keys, so the crypto was now inaccessible.

Customers get into a Telegram group and start investigating. They find out it was a closed casket funeral. They track down the doctor in India who claims the founder came in with an upset stomach, was kept overnight for fluids, then suddenly had a heart attack and died. No autopsy was done.

They dig deeper and discover the founder had a previous identity on black hat hacker forums under the name "Scepter." What was actually happening was when customers would buy bitcoin, he would just credit their account in the database with fake bitcoin that wasn't actually on the blockchain. He would take their money, go to other exchanges and buy bitcoin for himself. The whole time these users thought they had crypto in their account, but they never did."