A seemingly healthy 30-year-old cryptocurrency entrepreneur suddenly drops dead on his honeymoon in India, taking with him the passwords that access $215 million in investors' money.

A shoddy death certificate precedes a frantic race to embalm his body without an autopsy.
The odd circumstances surrounding his untimely death— including the fact that he signed a will just nine days before his demise — fueled suspicions that Gerald Cotten, CEO of Canada's largest crypto exchange, had faked the whole thing.
Proving that truth really is stranger than fiction, a new Netflix documentary, 'Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King' chronicles a group of investigators and internet sleuths as they attempted to unravel the mystery surrounding the suspicious death of the bitcoin millionaire.

It's a saga where answers lead to more questions in a scandal that captivated the internet. 
In the wild and unregulated world of decentralized finance, one rule remains tantamount: Trust No One.  
So alarm bells went off in January 2019 when QuadrigaCX's website went offline shortly after Cotten's death was announced on Facebook - effectively ending the ability of users to withdraw funds they had set aside for pensions, college tuition and mortgages. 
Hundreds of millions of dollars had vanished overnight.
'I just kept saying, "Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,''' recalled Tong Zou, a former QuadrigaCX client who lost $400,000. 'I felt like I was having a heart attack.'   
Suddenly sensational theories flooded the internet that the Bitcoin millionaire had faked his own death, run off with the money, and was living under an assumed identity abroad. Other conspiracies suggested that he was poisoned by his wife or that he had even been bumped off by mobsters. 
However, those conspiracies turned into circumstantial evidence when users discovered that Cotten, and Quadriga's co-founder, Michael Patryn had checkered pasts in Ponzi schemes, money laundering, identity theft and exit scams.    
To this day $169 million is missing, prompting investigators and victims to question, who was Gerald Cotten? Was he a deceptive criminal mastermind who pulled off one of the greatest exit scams in history? Or was he merely a Pokemon card-playing crypto-geek whose early demise came auspiciously as the walls began to close on his crypto Ponzi scheme?  





Cotten was a geeky computer nerd who founded QuadrigaCX in 2013 when bitcoin was still in its infancy.

Similar to websites like Robinhood or E* Trade for stocks, Quadriga allowed users to trade dollars into bitcoin and vice versa. By 2017, bitcoin's value skyrocketed to $20,000 and Cotten was a multimillionaire who enjoyed the good life. Secretly, Cotten was running a Ponzi scheme that embezzled investor's funds to fund his lavish lifestyle and gamble on speculative investments.
His story unraveled after he died unexpectedly in 2018 

Tong Zou knew something was terribly wrong when two months after he requested to withdraw money from his Quadriga accounts, the funds still hadn't showed up in his checking account.

The software engineer from San Francisco was not alone in this problem, hundreds of other customers were also facing the same dilemma.
'I started my withdrawal request around late October 2018,' said Zou in the documentary. Despite numerous attempts to reach Quadriga, he still hadn't heard anything through January 2019.  'I started to panic, this is my entire savings built through tens years of work and selling my apartment.
And I just prayed to god.' 
Things went from bad to worse on January 14, 2019 when Quadriga announced on its Facebook page that Gerry Cotton, the 30-year-old whiz kid who helmed Canada's largest crypto exchange, had died unexpectedly during his honeymoon to India.
'It is with a heavy heart that we announce the sudden passing of Gerald Cotten, co-founder and CEO of QuadrigaCX.

Gerry died due to complications with Crohn's disease on December 9, 2018 while travelling in India, where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need.' 
Shortly after the death notice, the company made a second announcement that was even more shocking than the first: Cotten was the only person with access to the digital wallets containing $215 million in bitcoins and cash belonging to Quadriga users. 
Quadriga suspended trading and filed for bankruptcy. 
According to an affidavit given by his late wife Jennifer Robertson, Quadriga could not pay-out its investors because she did not have the recovery keys for the company's 'cold' wallets — a system in which cryptocurrencies are stored offline to avoid hacking.

Nor did she have the passcode to Cotten's encrypted laptop, 'despite repeated and diligent searches' throughout their home hoping to find them written down somewhere.  
The news astounded the cryptocurrency community.
In a world where 'Trust No One' is the reigning principle of Bitcoin, the second was 'always have a contingency plan.' 





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Quadriga clients were stunned to discover that the 30-year-old CEO was the the only person with access to the passwords of digital wallets that contained $215 million in cash and cryptocurrency belonging to them. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Cotten's demise fueled speculation that he faked his death and ran off with the money.

Later, a probe led by the Ontario Securities Commission discovered that the cold wallets were empty, and in fact Cotten had embezzled the funds. 'Trust No One' airing tonight on Netflix follows a group of jilted Quadriga investors who dig into the dubious death of the crypto-wunderkind and their missing millions






On November 30, three days after signing his will, Cotten and Robertson landed in New Delhi on a tourist visa.

Robertson posted the couple's photos in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra on her Instagram. The iban account has since been deleted

'My initial reaction is bul****. This is bul****,' said Ali Mousavi, a jilted Quadriga customer who lost $70,000. 
Most cryptocurrency exchanges keep a small percentage of their holdings in 'hot wallets' which act more like a checkbook or debit card to facilitate fast trades.

The majority of coins however, are saved in offline 'cold wallets,' that are protected by an impossibly long, randomly generated private key. Unlike normal bank passwords, there is no recourse if you loose the key to your cold wallet, the money is lost forever.   
According to , Cotten claimed in a 2014 interview that he wrote his passwords on paper and locked them in a safe deposit box at a bank, 'because that's the best way to keep coins secure.' Later he joked that he had a 'safe bolted to the rafters in the attic.'
Shortly before his demise, Cotten told close friends and family that Quadriga had a 'dead man's switch' that would send them access to the exchange's funds in the case of his disappearance or death.

None of this was true.
The bizarre circumstances surrounding his death only fueled skepticism. According to Canada's [url=], the newlyweds were nine days into their honeymoon when the couple arrived at the $932-a-night Oberoi Rajvilas hotel in Jaipur on December 8, 2018.
Soon after checking in, Cotten complained of acute stomach pain and was driven to a nearby hospital where he was diagnosed with traveler's diarrhea. 24 hours later, he was dead.   
A report by Cotten's attending physician, Dr Jayant Sharma, revealed that he suffered from Crohn's disease, a chronic ailment that causes inflammation of the digestive tract.

His wife later told a court affidavit that Cotten had been diagnosed with the disease when he was 24.  
His condition quickly deteriorated the following afternoon, blood work indicated septic shock. Cotten went into cardiac arrest twice and was twice resuscitated but doctors were unable to revive him a third time.

By 7:26 pm, the 30-year-old crypto-wunderkind was declared dead, officially from 'complications of Crohn's disease.' But the gastroenterologist who treated Cotten told the The Globe and Mail that his death haunted him. 'We are not sure about the diagnosis,' he said.

No autopsy was performed.  





Cotten was an early evangelist of bitcoin who believed in its promises of decentralization and transparency.

Basically, 'he was a computer nerd who had entered the right business at the right time,' said Vanity Fair. Most cryptocurrency exchanges keep a small percentage of their holdings in 'hot wallets' which act more like a debit card to facilitate fast trades. The majority of coins are stored offline in 'cold wallets' that are protected by private key.
Unlike normal bank passwords, there is no recourse if you loose the digital key to your cold wallet, the money is lost forever. Shortly before his death, Cotten told close friends and family that Quadriga had a 'dead man's switch' that would send them access to the exchange's funds in the case of his disappearance or death






Tong Zou lost $400,000 in the Quadriga scam.

'I started my withdrawal request around late October 2018,' said Zou in the documentary. Despite numerous attempts to reach Quadriga, he still hadn't heard anything through January 2019. 'I started to panic, this is my entire savings built through tens years of work and selling my apartment.

And I just prayed to god'

The rapid decline of Cotten's vitals are consistent with what a patient with the disease might experience, though according to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, a person is unlikely to die from it.
What followed next was a macabre story of how Cotten's body was shuffled between hospitals in Jaipur for an embalming.

Details, at best, remain hazy. 
Quadrigss creditors raised concern over the authenticity of Cotten's death certificate which misspelled his name as 'Cottan,' - especially because forged death certificates and other documents are relatively easy to obtain in India 
According to The Globe and Mail, standard procedure in India mandates that bodies are to be embalmed before being transported.

In Cotten's case, his body was transferred directly to the hotel. 
From there, security guards working for the luxury 5 star hotel attempted to send his corpse to the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Hospital (MGMC) for embalming but the hospital turned down the request.
A senior doctor at the hospital later told  on condition of anonymity: 'They told me they worked for a hotel. I outright denied.

We don't accept bodies if they are not transferred directly from the hospital. Something is wrong.'
Cotten's remains were then taken to a government hospital where the doctors were less inquisitive and an embalming certificate was duly issued. On December 10, the day after Cotten's death, Robertson checked out of the hotel and flew home with her husband's body.
His closed casket funeral was four days later.
Quadriga kept his death secret for a month before making it public, which immediately fueled skepticism. 
'This is not right, something is off,' said Mousavi to Netflix.

He is one of the $115,000 users that were bilked in the Quadriga scam.  
Sparking more suspicion was the fact that just three days before leaving for India, Cotten filed a detailed will that left everything to Robertson: his $12 million real estate portfolio, a Lexus sports car, his Cessna aircraft, a 50-foot sailboat, bank accounts and even frequent flyer points.

He set aside $100,000 for the care of their Chihuahuas, but curiously made no mention of the external hard drives that stored stored most of Quadriga's funds. 













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Cotten's official cause of death was due to 'complications of Crohn's disease' - an ailment that doesn't commonly cause mortality.

The gastroenterologist who treated the conman told the The Globe and Mail that his death continued to haunt him. He said the conclusion was based on 'one of the best guesses of what took a 30-year-old man from a luxury hotel to his deathbed in little more than 24 hours.' No autopsy was performed.

Investigators raised concern over the authenticity of Cotten's death certificate which misspells his name as 'Cottan,' especially because forged death certificates and other documents are relatively easy to obtain in India

Inside Cotten's swift ascent from Pokemon geek to Ponzi scheme conman and crypto king multi-millionaire  


Cotten was an early cryptocurrency evangelist and part of a group that met in restaurants once a week called 'the Vancouver Bitcoin Co-op.' He believed that Bitcoin could change the world by challenging traditional forms of banking.
'Gerry came across friendly, positive, upbeat, he always laughed.

I don't know what Gerry would look like angry,' Andrew Wagner told the Netflix documentary. Like Cotten, he was also an early disciple of the Bitcoin Co-Op.   
His parents owned an antique store, and he grew up in the quiet suburb of Belleville, 'The Friendly City,' a waterfront community two hours north of Toronto that's best known for its cheddar cheese. 
One former friend described Cotten as a 'very nerdy' but brilliant computer kid who struggled to fit in. 
Online, his social handicap didn't matter.

As a teenager, Cotten gravitated toward the dark web where he forged virtual acquaintances in chatrooms and message boards on websites like TalkGold, a now defunct website that promoted shady get-rich-quick gambits, Ponzi schemes, and advice on how to create one's own scam. 
By the time he was 15, Cotten had already cut his teeth in his own pyramid scheme that he called S&S Investments.
It promised returns of up to 150 per cent in just 48 hours. The sham ran for three months before shutting down with investors' money disappearing. Sound familiar? 
Around this time, Cotten met his future QudrigaCX co-founder, Michael Patryn on the TalkGold forum.

Patryn was six years older and had a mysterious past with ties to organized crime. Photos from his now shuttered Facebook page show him posed next to exotic animals, behind the wheel of a Lamborghini and straddling an ATV in a desert.
'He was like a little brother to me,' said Patryn. Others described their relationship as sycophantic.

'The first time I met Gerry was in Mike's fancy car and Mike was doing all the talking and Gerry would laugh at his not-funny jokes,' recalled Wagner in the Netflix doc. 'That is key.'





'Cotten was fulfilling the requests of whoever was screaming the loudest,' said Daniel Tourangeau to Netflix.

Often, he provided withdrawals manually in cash deliveries sent in paper bags and shoeboxes, to coffee shops, laundromats, and pool halls. A year before his death, Cotten sent a colleague a photograph depicting rubber-banded stacks of Canadian dollars on his kitchen counter










Cotten co-founded QuadrigaCX in 2013 with Michael Patryn, a man that he met in the early 2000s on dark-web chatrooms. Patryn's real name was Omar Dhanani, a hustler with a criminal record that had previously been arrested in a Secret Service sting operation for selling stolen credit card information. Six years older, Patryn said that Cotten was 'like a little brother.' The business partners split ways in 2016, after the scandal broke, Patryn said: 'I didn't believe that he died when I read about it because of the way it was announced.' Today Patryn is Vice President of First Merit Bank in Illinois





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Quadrigsa was promoted as a cheap, fast and safe way to trade dollars into bitcoin and vice versa.

Audio from an old advertisement claimed: 'You'll never have trouble moving funds into and out of your quadriga account.' At the height of its popularity in 2017, Quadriga transacted $2 billion in trades, had 363,000 registered users, and 115,000 open accounts