Canada’s ‘Crypto King’ Kidnapped and Tortured for $3 Million

The bankrupted self-proclaimed ‘King of Crypto’ Aiden Pleterski was kidnapped, beaten, and held hostage over a $3 million ransom.

According to what his father told the police, "They basically held him for approximately three days, drove him around different, various parts of southern Ontario, beat him, tortured him, allowed him to make specific phone calls to specific people only.”

One of the few people he was allowed to call was Sandeep Gupta, his landlord, to whom Pleterski asked for the $3 million ransom.

Gupta recalled receiving several phone calls in the middle of the night until finally picking up to a desperate Pleterski on the other side of the line.

Although Gupta’s immediate reply was “There’s absolutely nothing I can do”, the landlord spent the following days working with the authorities to find an arrangement that could bring the fallen king back home safely.

On the third day of captivity, he was released on the condition that he would get the money fast and warned that there would be serious consequences if he contacted the police.

The incident that took place in December was revealed earlier this month in court documents referring to the Pleterski bankruptcy legal case.

The ‘Crypto King’ was forced into bankruptcy last August by investors who lost their money to the 24-year-old poor investment decisions.

Rob Stelzer, the bankruptcy trustee appointed to the case, told in an interview with CTV that Pleterski “really didn't do what he said he was going to do.”

He is accused of promising investors high returns on a pool of $41.5 million that he was going to invest in crypto and forex positions. But of the money he received, he invested only $670,000, less than 2% of the total amount.

Norman Groot, a lawyer hired to recover the funds of some of Pleterski’s victims thinks that the $41.5 million is just a fraction of what was lost since it doesn’t account for the cash or crypto the ‘King’ received. Total losses, Groots estimates, might be double that amount. Of the $41.5 million of the investment pool he is being accused of draining, there is still $16 million unclaimed by investors.

Pleterski claims that the money was lost in a series of bad investments that drained him by November 2021, when the crypto markets were experiencing an all-time high. His financial position, he claims, was aggravated by a desperate passionate need of getting people’s money back:

"I guess you could say greed took over, and I was taking very aggressive positions, and I was trying to make returns that obviously weren't feasible or weren't necessarily possible at the time, and it just caused more losses,"

But the trustee report tells a different story. The young entrepreneur spent, rather than lost, at least $16 million on a lavish lifestyle that included cars, fancy holidays, private jet rides, and mansions.

In his car collection is a limited-production mid-engined supercar McLaren Senna, bought for $1.6 million in 2021, two other McLarens, three Lamborghinis, one Ferrari, one Land Rover, one BMW, and four Audis. While to Sandeep Gupta, Pleterski pays $45,00 per month for a Burlington mansion.

Well, the guy can get a good contract for Netflix series or disappear like another representative of the royal crypto family. We hope for the better and continue to Observe.