Part VIII: The Exit

By December 2019, Quadriga's customers were fed up. It had been a whole year since Gerald Cotton died, under fishy circumstances, after embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars that belonged to them. The customers believed Jerry was still alive, and holding their money, and they wanted him brought to justice. But even though four different law enforcement agencies were investigated, including the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, none of them had given any updates on their progress. It had been radio silence, so through their lawyers, Quadriga's customers sent a letter to the RCMP. Here's what it said. To the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the purpose of this letter is to request, on behalf of the affected users, that the RCMP conducted an exhumation and post-mortem autopsy on the body of Gerald Cotton, to confirm both its identity and the cause of death. That's right. The customers wanted the Mounties to dig up Jerry's coffin, to make sure he was really in there, and if he was, they wanted to know what killed him. They wanted it done before the ground thawed out. The letter continues. Sheriff Council respectfully requests that this process be completed by spring of 2020, given decomposition concerns. But now it's the summer of 2021, and Jerry's coffin is still six feet underground, because, at least so far, the RCMP has ignored the customer's letter. So Jerry is either dead and decomposed, or he's two and a half years into a brand new life, and either way, he's probably not coming back. I'm Aaron Lammer. Welcome to the final episode of the Exit's Camp, a podcast about a mysterious death and a missing fortune. This is part eight, the Exit. When Jerry's widow, Jennifer Robertson, heard about the customer's exhumation letter, she was devastated. She didn't want anyone digging up her husband's grave, so she released a statement through her lawyer. It said, "My client, Jennifer Robertson, the wife of the late Gerald Cotton and executor of his estate, is heartbroken to learn of this request. Jerry died on December 9th, 2018, in India, and it should not be in doubt." You know what? Jen was right. At least about that last part. Jerry's death should not be in doubt, but it is. Two and a half years after the fact, and with $215 million at stake, there shouldn't be this many unanswered questions about what happened to Jerry, especially when all it would take to answer them is a search warrant. Well, let's get the damn coffin opened in a DNA test done. If the RCMP are such a bunch of whoosies that they don't want to exhumate the body, shame on them. This is Stephen Rahmbaum, that PI who finds people who fake their deaths. Have you ever heard of a body getting exhumed in a case like this? Yes. Yes. Yes. And more often than not, there's nothing in the coffin. I did a fake death case in Mongolia, where the person in law enforcement or Mongolia that helped fake the death and he was suckered into it, by the way. That's a long story. Rocks, lots of rocks in that particular case. Two, two hundred pound of rocks. You know, more often than not, it's an empty coffin, but in the cases where there has been somebody in the coffin and they've taken DNA, obviously, the jig is up. What would it take for the Royal Canadian mountain police to dig up a body? I asked Chris McBride, the cyber security expert, who was hired to try to hack into Jerry's computers right after he died. Chris worked for the RCMP for 27 years. I guess the real question is, is they would have to truly and strongly believe that the individuals can still live. They would have to, in this case, they'd have to present reasonable grounds which you're in the US that would be probable cause. That exhuming the body would sort of answer that question and resolve the issue. Now it's possible that the reason the RCMP won't exume Jerry's coffin is because they already know what's inside. We spoke to a couple sources who are interviewed by the RCMP as part of their investigation and they said they were told that the RCMP is confident that Jerry's dead. But they wouldn't say what makes them so sure. When we asked them ourselves, a spokesperson told us that the RCMP doesn't comment on ongoing investigations until or if charges are filed. All of the unresolved questions about Jerry's death have led to some bizarre conspiracy theories. There are these sort of alternative ideas that maybe his wife was involved in his death, that maybe he had planned to fake his death and things went wrong, that maybe he was really dead. This is Amy Kaster who covered Jerry's story early on when it seemed like almost anything was possible. I think there was even somebody that said maybe he swallowed the USB drive carrying the keys to his cold wallet, you know, and that's what killed him. So all sorts of strange ideas about what happened to Jerry Cotton. Most people think Jerry either really died from complications of Crohn's disease or he faked his death and ran away. But in the two years that we've been investigating this story, we've heard many other theories. We also came up with a few ourselves and we looked into all of them as best we could, even the crackpot ones. Since this is our last episode, I thought I'd quickly run through a few of these theories. Okay, theory number one. Could Jerry have been murdered? What if Jerry was poisoned? Maybe his scammy past caught up with him and somebody he stole money from slipped something into his food. Jerry never had an autopsy, so we can't completely rule it out. But Jen was with him the whole time in India. She's never raised any questions about foul play. And she doesn't seem like a suspect herself. What would her motive have been? Not money. She was already rich when Jerry was alive, and as a result of his death, she ended up broke. Plus, according to the doctor who treated Jerry, as well as other medical professionals we heard from, Jerry's symptoms were consistent with a natural death from Crohn's disease. Theory number two. Could Jerry have faked his death without Jen knowing? Jen insists that Jerry is dead. And maybe that's what she believes. But could she be wrong? What if Jerry pulled off the ultimate deception, faking his death so convincingly that even his wife, who was with him the whole time, bought it. Jen says she was with him in the hospital when he died, and then she ideed his body at the mor. That means Jerry would have had to go to the hospital with Jen and then do a switcheroo that convinced her he was dead when he wasn't. And that the body in his coffin was his when it wasn't. And then at least a dozen employees from the hotel and hospital would have had to pull off some kind of improvisational theater performance for Jen, like they were the cast of the movie The Gang. And finally, Theory number three. Could Jerry have been a government asset? What if Jerry was secretly working for Canadian intelligence? Maybe he cut a deal then form on somebody from the money laundering underworld, and the government helped them disappear so he could join some kind of witness protection? That might explain why the RCMP refuses to exume his coffin. One of our sources even told us that it was Jerry's childhood dream to be an agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is like Canada's CIA. But beyond that, we never found any evidence to support this theory. This is free range with Von Miller, the podcast where I step outside the lawns, and I take you with each week, we're talking everything, from the biggest stories around the league to the biggest stories off the field. This isn't your average sports podcast. This is Game meets Culture, locker room meets living room, and no topic is off limits. So if you're in a good conversation that ruffles a few feathers, join me every Wednesday and follow free range with Von Miller, everywhere you get your podcast. We still don't know for sure whether Jerry is alive or dead, but at least now we do know what happened to his customers' money. In spring of 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission released a big report on quadriga. The OSC, which is like Canada's SEC, spent 10 months investigating the exchange's finances, trying to figure out where the customers' $215 million went. A previous investigation by Ernst & Young had been unable to account for about $80 million, which led his customers to believe that Jerry could still have it. But the OSC was more thorough, and they concluded that quadriga's money was all gone. Jerry had gambled it away at his own casino. He used fake funds to buy huge amounts of Ethereum from quadriga customers. In effect, Jerry took a huge, risky, leveraged position on his customers' behalf, without their knowledge. If the price of Ethereum had gone up, he could have made everybody whole and gotten mega rich himself. But in early 2018, Ethereum crashed, and usually when crypto prices crashed, lots of people pulled their money out. So, Jerry had to sell his stolen Ethereum at rock bottom prices to fund withdrawals. And it totally wiped him out, $143 million worth of customer money was lost. It created a hole that Jerry would have never been able to dig himself out of. On the bright side, some of the customer's money has been recovered. Jerry's houses have been sold, and the cash frozen by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been released. In total, about $46 million has been salvaged. But after all the accountants and lawyers get paid, quadriga's customers might only get back a small fraction of what they're owed. Basically, pennies on the dollar. And to add insult to injury, crypto prices have gone way up since Jerry's death. The cryptocurrency that quadriga customers lost was worth a couple hundred million in 2018. But it could be worth over a billion dollars today. The hole that Jerry left behind keeps getting bigger and bigger. How much money did you have on quadriga? I prefer not to disclose exact amounts, but it's a six-figure type sum. So it was a substantial amount. This is QCXN. He is the anonymous quadriga customer turned detective who first discovered Jerry's teenage Ponzi schemes. You know, there are people who are far worse off than me. There are other people who lost literally their entire life savings. And people whose relationships were destroyed or broke up with it. Why for a partner? So still people have been devastated by this. From what I understand, you've been in touch with some of the law enforcement agencies investigating quadriga. What do you make of those investigations? There's supposedly a number of law enforcement agencies looking into it. You know, the RCMP, certainly it's their jurisdiction, they're supposed to be investigating. You know, the FBI are also investigating. And I have communicated with both of those agencies, probably more the FBI than the RCMP, truth be told. We haven't seen much evidence at all from the RCMP. In fact, it's pretty much been radio silence and in fact, even attempts to kind of share information with them and provide some of what we've found or the evidence that we think is quite culminating, you know, we haven't received a response. I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this question, but is there investigation into Jerry's criminal conduct? Or is it into whether he's still alive? As far as the RCMP is concerned, they are satisfied that he's dead. That's what they've gone on record to say. And whether or not they're investigating the criminality of his behavior and the expulsion of funds, I honestly don't know. We don't even know if there was an active investigation that doesn't seem to be. Can you tell me anything about your interactions with law enforcement, what they were interested in when they talked to you? I can't say too much and certainly, you know, I can't say anything about my interactions with the FBI. The law enforcement, you know, will certainly ask that, you know, you keep those conversations confidential. All I would say is that, you know, in some of my earlier conversations with the RCMP, it did seem that, you know, that blockchain expertise and criminal matters involving cryptocurrency. We're not in there direct realm of expertise. And, you know, I know for a fact that financial crime is something that is quite under resourced in Canada. But at the same time, you know, from a credit tip perspective, I can say that, you know, we are, it's a group incredibly frustrated, that there hasn't been more progress, that there hasn't been, you know, more people arrested or interviewed. We know for a fact that some of the contractors at Quadrigger haven't even been interviewed, you know, so some of these stuff is quite baffling to us when, you know, you've got $200 million that's missing. If someone had robbed a bank and absconded with $200 million, you know, I think there'd be a lot more attention on this case, but because it's cryptocurrency, for some reason, people somehow see that as being a less legitimate form of money. So your research was cited in the letter that the customer's lawyer sent requesting to have Jerry exhumed. I wonder if you could tell me about how that effort came about and maybe where it is now. Yeah, there was, I guess, enough doubt in our minds and in other people's minds as well, that he was dead, that we felt it was sufficient to warrant. Confirming his death, you know, and it was said to me, I won't say who, but, you know, other law enforcement individuals have said to me when you've got that amount of money missing, you know, you either get a body or you get a DNA test, you know, you make sure. So that, you know, was what drove that request. Now, I mean, for me, I'm still in the, you know, the 99% sure somewhere between 95 and 99% sure that he used it. I certainly don't think the RCMP are investigating it any further. Where would you put the odds of the exhumation happening? 0.01%. I think right now, the RCMP have expressed no interest in doing that. They've said, you know, they're satisfied that he's dead. The, from minor standing to the, it's out of the FBI's jurisdiction that's in Canada, it's not, you know, something that they could prosecute. From minor standing of how the FBI work, though, if that had happened on American soil, they would have exhumed the body and confirmed with a DNA sample that, you know, that was in fact Gerald Cotton, and he was in fact dead. So it sounds to me like you're satisfied that Jerry is dead. Yeah, I guess that's a, that's a fair summary, I guess, of how I see things, but, you know, if new evidence presented itself, you know, I am agnostic. So if somebody comes up with a blurry photograph of Jerry, you know, departing from a private jet somewhere in Honduras or, you know, some far-flung location, you know, I'll happily take a look. And what do you think about Jerry's widow, Jen? Certainly, you know, she's, she's had to endure, you know, a shitstorm of epic proportions. And is that, again, it's kind of a data point that suggests that Jerry is dead. I mean, you know, if I think if he was alive, is that the kind of situation that, you know, you leave your wife in, wouldn't you want to kind of, you know, spirit your partner away? To some island somewhere away, you can, you know, leave out the rest of your days in fabulous wealth. Before we go, I want to tell you a story. It's about two people you've heard a lot about before on this podcast. Jerry's widow, Jennifer Robertson, and his old business partner, the co-founder of Quadriga. Michael Pattern, aka Omar Denyte. I heard this story from a credible source, though it wasn't either of them. Jen and Mike never met each other when Jerry was alive. Mike didn't even know Jerry had gotten married. But after Jerry's death was announced, Mike reached out to Jen to send his condolences, and they started texting. They would check in every few weeks, mostly for small-time. But one day, Jen happened to mention that she was planning a vacation to Aruba. This was a little while after Quadriga shut down. When Jen was getting death threats from angry customers, she needed to get out of Halifax for a while. But when Jen told Mike where she was going, he said, "Oh, that's so funny. He was going to Aruba too, at the same time." And he'd even be staying in a hotel close to hers. The coincidence was almost unbelievable. Mike lived in Thailand, which is 22 hours from Aruba by plane. What were the chances that they would be there at the same time? Anyway, Mike asked Jen if they could have dinner together on the island, and Jen agreed. So they met at a restaurant, and when they sat down to eat, Mike started asking questions. He wanted to know if Jerry had faked his death, because Mike knew a thing or two about starting a new life under a different identity. He also knew maybe better than anybody what Jerry was really capable of, and he didn't believe that his old friend was really dead. So Jen described Jerry's death in detail. They talked about it for a while, and finally, Mike was convinced. They spent the rest of the meal sharing happy memories about Jerry, and then Jen and Mike stood up and said their goodbyes. Jen has spent most of the last two years laying low, but she recently reappeared on social media. According to her Facebook and Instagram accounts, she's still living in Halifax, in a tiny apartment, with her two chihuahas, Nitro and Goldie. Remember them? Jerry left them $100,000 in his well, but it was seized as part of the settlement with Quadrigas customers. Anyway, Jen's working as a teacher, and it looks like she has a new boyfriend. He's a roofer. It doesn't seem like she's keeping a terrible secret, or hiding a fortune. Jen even signed a deal to write a book. It'll be out in 2022. It's called Bitcoin Widow, Gerald Cotton, Quadrigas Missing Millions, and me. The description on her literary agent's website calls it a memoir of love and loss, of unexpectedly having it all, and just as suddenly losing everything. The book's tagline is, "What if your fairy tale was built on fraud?" But Jen still remembers the good times, too. In November 2020, she posted a picture on Facebook, from one of her and Jerry's vacations. The two of them were riding on camels, side by side, through a desert. They're smiling and holding hands. Jen's caption on the photo reads, "How lucky was I to have something that made saying goodbye so hard." Jerry's favorite movie was Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a teenage con artist. It came out in 2002 when Jerry was 14 years old. One year later, he was running cons of his own. Nobody ever caught him, so he never stopped. He stole people's money, and then he disappeared. Over and over again. His life was a lie, and his death sure looked like one, too. Because when Jerry died, he was plotting an exit scam. By the end of 2018, he'd embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars and gambled it away. Until Quadriga was so low on funds that when one customer wanted to make a withdrawal, Jerry had to wait for another customer to make a deposit. Eventually, the exchange would have collapsed altogether, but by then, Jerry hoped that somebody else would be left holding the bag. He was about to turn the company over to Aaron Matthews, his customer service rep, and retire, maybe sell his yacht to somewhere he couldn't be extradited from. But then, at that exact moment, before Jerry could put his best-laid plans into action, he either pulled the rip-cord early and faked his death, or he died, of a freak medical complication. Now, to be fair, if Jerry really did die, maybe it wasn't such a coincidence. He just committed one of the biggest financial crimes in Canadian history. He was over 200 million dollars in debt, and it was only a matter of time before he was exposed. The stress might have given him an ulcer. But on the other hand, just because Quadriga was broke doesn't mean Jerry was. Remember when I told you about Jerry's nest egg? His personal crypto investments, which were never found? By some estimates, that nest egg was worth $50 million at the time of his alleged death. With the way crypto prices have appreciated, it could be worth over a billion now. Maybe the reason it was never found is because Jerry took it with him. Maybe he's spending it right now. But in either case, Jerry got away with it. He stole his customer's money and escaped the consequences. He pulled off his final exit scam. Even if the exit part was an accident. Jerry, if you're listening, you need to call me because I can expedite your safe return to civilization. You can give the phone number if you want. 212-969-0286. I have done this for other people who decide to come in from the cold as the saying goes, and I can get you back safely and in a way that would be more beneficial to you than just showing up. Exit Scam was written and produced by me, Aaron Lammer, and Lane Brown, mixing and additional editing by Martin D. Fowler. Show art and art direction by Mickey DuJay. The theme song is by Francis and the lights and scoring from the whole show was by Mark Allen Piccolo, Rossi Manini, Francis Starlight, Martin D. Fowler, and myself with additional cues from epidemic sound and blue dot sessions. Our executive producers are Max Linsky, Lane Brown, and myself for Treats Media. Additional sound editing and producing by James Nicholson, Additional Producing by Jacqueline Scree. One of you have a special thanks to Jake Shryer, who helped coach me through narrating the show. Also thanks to Anne Garrett, Patty Greco, Jay Kang, Evan Ratliffe, Naraj Agrawal, Ledger Status. I want to thank Joel Lovell, Henry Milofsky, Jenna Weiss Berman, and everyone at Pineapple Street Studio. I want to thank Lizzie Dana Han, and everyone at Cadence 13, plus JD Crowley, and everyone at Odyssey. Everyone at Case Fleet, and anyone we forgot, thank you. We couldn't have done it without you. It might be worth continuing to stay subscribed to this feed, because we're talking about doing some bonus episodes. Plus, if anything new happens, you know we'll be back. Thanks for listening. [Music]