The founder of the fraud recovery law firm says the only other avenue available for investors would be to make reports to the Ontario Securities Commission or the police.
The 23-year-old ‘Crypto King’ is facing a number of demands among 140 of his investors as they try to claw back a collective total of $35 million from his company AP Private Equity Limited.
Creditors are hard at work trying to loosen where all the money they apparently gave Canadian Aiden Pleterski to make crypto and foreign exchange investments on their behalf ended up, according to a Sept. 20 CBC report.
A bankruptcy trustee’s report, creditors meeting minutes, court filings, and complaints made to Investigation Counsel PC reveal Pleterski owned 11 vehicles, leased four other luxury cars, frequently flew on private jets, and was living in a lakefront mansion costing $45,000 a month to rent.
So far roughly $2 million worth of assets has been seized, among them two McLarens, two BMWs, and a Lamborghini.
Norman Groot, the founder of Investigation Counsel PC, a fraud recovery law firm demanded the “large lifestyle burn rate” still doesn’t “account for the amount of money that’s missing.”
An initial lawsuit brought against Pleterski resulted in his assets and bank accounts being frozen, but that has now been outdated by bankruptcy proceedings. At this stage, it is the only recovery process for investors because bankruptcy proceedings take superiority over civil claims.
Groot commented that “the only other avenue available for investors would be to make reports to the Ontario Securities Commission and the police.”
“Those processes are lengthy,” he said while adding, “The more time that goes by, the less likely there’s a recovery of evidence and less likely there’s a recovery of money.”
Groot said the warning signs for investors of extremely high returns were there for all to see.
“Five percent interest [a week] is not available on the open market. A 23-year-old kid is unlikely to be the next Bill Gates talk to somebody who is conservative and get a second opinion.”
Creditor Diane Moore invested $60,000 and said her investment contract gave her the lion’s share of a 70-30 split on any capital gains which were targeted at 10 to 20 percent biweekly.
She claimed to be out of pocket $50,000, saying, “The whole thing was based on trust.”
Pleterski’s lawyer Micheal Simaan has disputed the allegations and said his client has been cooperating fully with the bankruptcy process.
According to Simaan, his client started investing in crypto as a teen.
Pleterski claimed his investment company ran into trouble thanks to “a series of margin calls and bad trades,” possibly exacerbated by the market crash and continuing crypto winter.
He said all the money fronted by investors in late 2021 and early 2022 is gone.
The trustee said that they still needed to receive supporting evidence of the trades after requesting proof of transactions and bank statements.
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