Ontario's 'Crypto King' allegedly still hiding online income ahead of bankruptcy discharge hearing
CBC
Ontario's self-described "Crypto King" continues to hide income connected to online gaming and other internet services from his bankruptcy proceeding, according to the trustee overseeing it.
New court filings claim Aiden Pleterski sold $430,000 worth of virtual weapons for online games and started managing OnlyFans creators for a 40 per cent cut of their profits while bankrupt.
All of those funds were allegedly undisclosed, and will likely factor into whether Ontario Superior Court Justice William Black releases the 25-year-old from bankruptcy in a Toronto hearing Wednesday morning.
The trustee — the accounting firm Grant Thornton — wants a judge to deny Pleterski a discharge until he pays back more than $4.5 million in assets and funds it says he hasn't accounted for and pays back 30 per cent, roughly $9 million, of the money the bankruptcy proceedings found more than 150 creditors lost with him.
"These punitive measures will ensure that I am punished for the rest of my life for mostly immature actions on my part that had no ill intent," Pleterski said in an recent affidavit.
"Essentially, they want me to remain an undischarged bankrupt for the rest of my life."
Bankruptcy proceedings are administered by a licensed trustee, responsible for investigating the finances of a person or business that has gone bankrupt and for administering their estate.
CBC Toronto has reported extensively on Pleterski since the summer of 2022, when he was forced into bankruptcy by some of his investors. For nearly two years, his investors have been trying to track down up to $40 million they gave him to invest in cryptocurrencies and foreign exchanges — although only about $27 million in proven claims were admitted to the bankruptcy proceedings.
In May, Pleterski was charged with fraud and money laundering following an 18-month joint investigation between Durham Regional Police and the Ontario Securities Commission.
Police allege Pleterski solicited funds from investors, promising massive profits and guaranteeing no losses from their original investment. When investors couldn't access the money they provided to him, many reported the situation to police. None of the charges have been tested in court.
The bankruptcy trustee's investigation previously found that Pleterski only invested about two per cent of the investors' funds while spending nearly $16 million on himself — renting private jets, going on vacations, adding luxury cars to his collection and leasing to buy a lakefront mansion prior to his bankruptcy.
In his affidavit, Pleterski denies that he only invested about two per cent of the investors' funds.
Instead, he says that while investing in cryptocurrency he issued investor payouts by allowing new investors to take over the position of outgoing investors in his cryptocurrency accounts to avoid paying currency transaction fees.
"New investors took the place of these 'first investors' in the cryptocurrency accounts, and so their money was invested," Pleterski said. "lt was just invested without losing money as part of the currency exchange."
