Yahoo Finance The shocking contents in dead man’s $200m Bitcoin wallet
It was the ultimate treasure chest: AU$200 million in cryptocurrency locked away in wallets that only a dead man could access.
Investigators have finally cracked the code to access the digital wallets previously held by deceased chief executive of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Quadriga CX, Gerald Cotten.
But the $200 million wasn’t there.
The six wallets had been drained in April last year – well before his December death, revealed audit firm Ernst & Young, which was engaged to help recover the lost currency.
The debacle has affected approximately 115,000 Quadriga CX users who have been unable to access their digital currency.
EY found Quadriga CX looks to have created 14 fake accounts. Those accounts were used to trade and withdraw cryptocurrency to addresses not associated with Quadriga CX, with the auditors now scrutinising the transaction histories.
The accounts engaged in a “significant volume” of activity, according to EY, and the auditor wants to know whether deposits into those accounts were faked and ultimately where the $200 million has landed.
The issue was first reported in January by Cotten’s widow, Jennifer Robertson, a month after her husband died. She told the Supreme Court that the firm believed all the money was in the wallets, which only her deceased partner held the keys too.
“After Gerry’s death, Quadriga’s inventory of cryptocurrency has become unavailable and some of it may be lost,” Robertson said at the time, explaining that they had been unable to hack into Cotten’s computer or find his passwords.
The courts later heard that Quadriga had accidentally transferred an additional $519,000 to the then-inaccessible wallets in February, despite being aware that they couldn’t access the money.
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Now read: Crypto boss dies with the ONLY password to unlock $200 million
Now read: Crypto firm sends $519,000 in Bitcoin to dead man’s wallet
