Crypto Infrastructure

Agencies Jennifer Robertson shared a picture of herself and husband Gerald Cotten at the Taj Mahal.

Crime And Punishment: Five Russians Who Ran Afoul Of The Law And Made News







Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 5 1. Anna Chapman Born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, the f lame-haired Russian got a British citizenship through marriage. In June 2010, she was arrested along with nine other Russians on conspiracy charges in New York. She pleaded guilty and was deported to Russia as part of a prisoner swap. She has since become a famous model and television star in her home country. She was recently in the news for her pro-Trump Instagram profile.(Image: Instagram/@anya.chapman) 2. Nikita Vladimirovich Kuzmin In 2010, Russian national Ku zmi n wa s arrested in the US, and, in 2011, he pled guilty in a cooperation agreement to fraud and computer intrusion. Kuzmin is the creator of the ‘Gozi’ malware, which he used to steal from banks across Europe and the US. The malware is said to have infected over a million computers. Kuzmin was sentenced to 37 months in jail and a fine of $6.9 million.(Image: www.mdzol.com) 3. Rudolf Abel A Soviet intelligence officer, his real name is Vilyam ‘Willie’ Genrikhovich Fisher. After spending many years in the US as a Soviet spy, he was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, within four years, he was exchanged for captured American pilot Francis Gary Powers. Ma rk Rylance won the Academy Award for his portrayal of Abel’s character in the 2015 Steven Spielberg film, Bridge of Spies. (Image: www.fbi.gov) 4. Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev He is one of the mostwanted cybercriminals in the world and it is often remarked that he enjoys the lifestyle of a James Bond villain. The FBI has a $3 million bounty on his capture. Bogachev has been accused and indicted in the US for stealing hundreds of millions from banks. A report in The New York Times from March 2017 claims that Bogachev lives an enviable life in the open and is a possible asset to Russian intelligence. (Image: www.fbi.gov) 5. Mikhail Khodorkovsky In 2003, Khodorkovsky was considered to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune close to $15 billion. Later in the same year, Khodorkovsky was charged with fraud. He was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in jail. In 2013, Vladimir Putin pardoned him. Upon release, Khodorkovsky became a resident of Switzerland, and was reported to be worth $500 million in 2014. He re-launched the ‘Open Russia’ initiative, which works to promote reforms in Russia and he has been described by The Economist as ‘Kremlin’s leading critic-in-exile’. (Image: www.khodorkovsky.com)

Fool’s Gold

Taylor Swift And Other Celebrities Who Were Embroiled In Complicated Lawsuits

Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 2 Justin Bieber sued for $100,000 After Robert Earl Morgan recorded Justin Bieber's unsuccessful attempt to chug a beer bong, the 'Sorry' singer smashed the fellow pub-goer's cell phone, which resulted in $100,000 lawsuit. Usher's alleged 2012 lawsuit A woman alleged the rapper of infecting her with herpes. As per the California law, it is illegal to knowingly or recklessly transmit an STD. Radar Online reported, Usher paid the celeb stylist $1.1 million dollar to settle the lawsuit.

A consignment of teddy bears, yet to be delivered, is the last connection to millionaire Gerald Cotten ’s final days before his suspicious death in India.Pastor Cherukupalli Rama Rao has been waiting for four months for a dozen odd beady-eyed teddy bears to reach the six children under his charge at the Angel House India home in Venkatapuram village, Mudigona, Telangana.But the stuffed teddies are probably hibernating somewhere in a five-star luxury hotel in Jaipur — or they are simply lost in transit.Rama Rao oversees an orphanage built — albeit not entirely — with the help of a Rs 15-lakh donation from Canadian cryptocurrency entrepreneur Gerald Cotten and his wife, Jennifer Robertson In December 2018, Cotten, the founder-CEO of QuadrigaCX , and Robertson flew to Jaipur from Canada for their honeymoon and were to go for the opening of the Jennifer Robertson and Gerald Cotten House.But the couple never reached Venkatapuram, nor did their gifts.“We have not received the teddy bears yet,” Stephen Chittababu, an administrator for Angel House India in Hyderabad tells ETPanache. Instead, the staff received an email: “It is heartbreaking. Gerald passed away in Jaipur. Please go forward with the opening.” It was sent by Robertson.According to reports in Canadian media, Cotten and Robertson had tied the knot in Scotland in October 2018. A month later, on November 27, Cotten reportedly made his will, leaving all his financial assets to his wife, making her the sole executor of his estate. His sailboat went to his parents, Bruce and Cheryl Cotten, while his private aircraft, a Cessna 400, was given to his brother, Bradley.For a 30-year-old with no history of life-threatening ailments, the decision to draft his will days before he left for India can be construed as a sign of newfound conjugal responsibility or a traveller’s wariness about the dangers of the subcontinent.The honeymoon was short-lived. Within 24 hours of their arrival on December 8, Cotten was declared dead.Cotten’s death has been a loss, not just to his wife, but to investors who traded on QuadrigaCX, Canada’s largest crypto currency exchange. In its assessment of the lawsuits filed by 252 creditors, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court found that users of the nowdefunct exchange are owed C$260 million (approx. US $195 million), most of which is held in cryptocurrency.According to court documents, C$190 million (approx. US $142 million) in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency are locked in offline wallets that are inaccessible since Cotten was the only person who knew the encrypted passcodes. The residual amount is held in cash linked to bank drafts in the hands of third-party payment companies.Ernst & Young, appointed by the court to audit the firm’s accounts, found that five of the six cold wallets used to store investors’ cryptocurrency have been empty since April 2018. The sixth was used to receive bitcoin funds from another exchange as late as December 3, a few days before Cotten’s death.Since January 2018, QuadrigaCX was locked in litigation with a major Canadian bank, which froze $28 million of its assets.When QuadrigaCX was founded in 2013, the company didn’t reveal to investors that its co-founder, Michael Patryn, was previously known as Omar Dhanani, a convicted felon who served time in the US.According to reports, in 2005, Dhanani was sentenced to 18 months in a US federal prison for identity theft. He pleaded guilty to running shadowcrew.com, a now-defunct online marketplace where stolen account numbers and credit card data were peddled.Contradicting a Bloomberg investigation, Patryn denies the allegation that he and Dhanani are the same person. Patryn left Quadriga in 2016 following disagreements with Cotten over the company’s plan to go public.Patryn isn’t the only one in this ménage to have changed his name. In 2016, Cotten’s then girlfriend Jennifer changed her surname twice. Property records show that Jennifer Forgeron bought real estate in May 2016. Soon after, she changed her surname to Griffith. Later in December, she became Jennifer Robertson.According to Nova Scotia’s Registry of Joint Stock Companies, two companies registered with it — QuadrigaCX and Robertson Nova Property Inc (RNA) — share their official addresses with that of the Cottens’ old home.Nova Scotia’s property registry shows that RNA has a net worth of around $7 million with only one employee on its books — Jennifer Robertson. Since its inception in 2016 till 2018, the company acquired more than a dozen luxury properties that have either been sold or leased out.Cotten’s widow set off a firestorm after she informed the court that she was not privy to the passwords of QuadrigaCX’s cold wallets and wasn’t involved in the operational side of the business. However, a few users have shared photographic evidence online, including screenshots of payments directly from RNA.These pertain to payments towards withdrawal requests made to the crypto exchange in 2016 and 2017. Some clients argued that a third-party company unrelated to QuadrigaCX is a breach of law and establishes Robertson’s complicity in siphoning funds.Attempts to contact Robertson drew a blank.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 account has since been made private.On December 8, the couple reached Jaipur and checked into the Oberoi Rajvilas where they had a reservation for four days. They were scheduled to reach Hyderabad on December 12 and travel to Venkatapuram to inaugurate the orphanage.According to Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, shortly after checking into the hotel at 6.10 pm, Cotten complained of a stomach pain. He was attended to by a hotel doctor, who recommended consulting a specialist at Fortis Escorts Hospital. A hospital statement said that Cotten was brought in at 9.45 pm with what was deemed traveller’s diarrhoea.According to reports, Cotten spent the night in a private room. Hospital documents, accessed by The Times of India, say he was diagnosed with “septic shock, perforation, peritonitis and intestinal obstruction”. A report by Cotten’s treating doctor, Dr Jayant Sharma, reveals that the Canadian suffered from Crohn’s disease, a chronic ailment that causes inflammation of the digestive tract.Robertson’s affidavit to the court said that Cotten was diagnosed with the disease when he was 24.At 2.45 pm on December 9, Cotten went into cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated twice and placed on a ventilator. By 7.26 pm, he was declared dead. The cause of death was identified as cardiac arrest triggered by a perforation. No autopsy was performed.The rapid decline of Cotten’s vitals is consistent with what a patient with Crohn’s might experience. However, research shows that mortality rates from the disease have gone down in recent years.On the morning of December 10, the Jawahar Circle police station issued an NOC — a document that rules out foul play and is required to transfer the body of foreign nationals. The death certificate issued by the Rajasthan government states that Cotten died on December 9, but wrongly identifies him as ‘Gerald William Cottan’.His body was then transferred to the hotel.When foreign nationals die in India, the standard procedure mandates that the body be embalmed before being transported. Fortis normally sends corpses of foreigners to the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Hospital (MGMC). However, this time, the hospital had to turn down a request.“Two boys came over and asked if I could embalm the body of a Canadian man,” a senior doctor at MGMC’s Department of Anatomy tells ETPanache on condition of anonymity. “They told me they worked for a hotel. I outright denied. Bilkul no, no. We don’t accept bodies if they are not transferred directly from the hospital concerned in an ambulance. Something is wrong.”Cotten’s mortal remains were then taken to the SMS Medical College, a government institution. The doctors there were less inquisitive. An embalming certificate was duly issued.During a telephonic conversation, Oberoi Rajvilas refused to comment, saying, “We have already made our position clear. All the information is out in the public domain. We have nothing more to add at this point.” A detailed questionnaire seeking details of the teddy-bear package and the transportation of Cotten’s body went unanswered.Hospital records accessed by the Globe and Mail found that representatives of Oberoi Rajvilas transported the body for the embalming process. The contact details listed in the form include a phone number of the hotel’s security department and the licence plate of a company car.According to the death certificate, Cotten’s place of death is Fortis Escorts Hospital, Malviya Nagar, Jaipur. It further lists his address at time of death as the Oberoi Rajvilas.The death was officially registered on December 13, by which time Robertson had returned to Canada. An official at the High Commission of Canada in New Delhi said in an email that consular assistance was provided in the case. “To protect the privacy of the individuals concerned, further details on this case cannot be released,” it further said.On December 10, the day after Cotten’s death, Robertson checked out of the hotel, leaving in their charge the teddy bears meant for the children at the orphanage.With olive-green walls, the single-storey Jennifer Robertson and Gerald Cotten Home sits on elevated ground, according to photos accessed by ETPanache. The façade of the building features a plaque with the names of the two patrons. Inscribed beneath it is: “Follow your dreams — Reach for the stars — Let your heart be your guide.”Rama Rao tells ETPanache that Robertson reached out to Angel House India in June 2018, but funds were not forthcoming. He had to dip into his personal finances to provide basic necessities for the children.The Cottens provided money that was enough to buy construction materials. “[But] For dayto-day expenses, we still survive on donations from local patrons like the village elders, political leaders, and generous citizens of the district,” Rama Rao says. The construction of the building set him back by Rs 7-lakh, a debt, he says, he is struggling to repay.Rama Rao and his wife run the orphanage with assistance from a cook, teacher, and three other people. “I spend around Rs 35,000 a month to pay salaries and stock up the kitchen,” he says.When asked whether he knew about the nature of Cotten’s work, administrator Chittababu says the details are immaterial. “It is the act of generosity that matters, not the total wealth of a donor. Homes run by Angel House India accommodate 4,285 children across the country and the organisation’s foreign arm accepts a one-time donation of US $21,350 [ approx. Rs 15 lakh] from patrons.”“Gerald died in his prime. God bless his soul,” Chittababu adds.Or did he? A New York Times article hints that there could be more at play here, saying that investors have taken to Reddit and Twitter to “question whether Cotten had indeed died — or whether, perhaps, he had faked his death” to pull off a grand exit scam.