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女孩被安省“加密货币之王”骗得血本无归 反转为其喊冤：我相信他
https://info.51.ca/articles/1282799
2024年02月03日 加国无忧作者：哈科6评论
面对经济困难，Pleterski告诉 Anna，他受到了勒索威胁。
她说：“他说这些人会出现在他的房子里，威胁要追杀他的家人，”
代表Pleterski投资者之一的欺诈律师Norman Groot表示，他的办公室收到的信息表明，参与有组织犯罪的个人与这位25岁的年轻人进行了投资，将现金转移到加密货币中，然后在另一方提取现金。
他说：“我认为，他们不希望自己的资金来源受到调查。”
Groot说，在他看来，他没有理由相信Pleterski背后有另一个主谋。
在2022年12月的三天里，Pleterski被绑架，并被勒索300万元赎金。他谈到了他与房东Sandeep Gupta的关系，一名法官后来称这种关系“奇怪而复杂”。
在社交媒体上发布的一段经过编辑、匿名发布的录音中，Pleterski说：“当我注意到很多事情都不对劲时，我就去问Sandeep Gupta，并寻求他的指导和指导。”
W5曾多次联系Gupta置评，但均未得到回应。
作为Pleterski正在进行的破产程序的一部分，Gupta去年2月接受了法院的检查。他在信中说，Pleterski在伯灵顿的一处豪宅住了将近一年，直到2022年6月，他开始面临财务问题，拖欠每月4.5万元的租金，两人的关系从房东演变为指导一些意见。
在接受W5采访时，当被问及对过去两年发生的事件的看法时，作为一名主们从事欺诈案件的律师，Groot表示，投资者心中的关键是他们觉得Pleterski“值得信赖和可靠”。
他说：“任何欺诈案件都需要一些信任，然后是一些欺骗。”
'Crypto king' investor says she doesn’t believe Pleterski is orchestrating alleged Ponzi scheme alone
An investor who handed Ontario’s so-called “crypto king” $75,000 believes Aiden Pleterski is not the sole mastermind orchestrating the alleged multi-million dollar investment scheme that’s become synonymous with his name.
“I'm not interested in seeing Aiden alone face the consequences,” Anna, whose identity has been concealed, said in an exclusive interview with W5 in Central America, where she says she is keeping a low profile.
“I'm really interested in these other people who were in his orbit, who were manipulating him into doing all of this.”
Pleterski was forced into bankruptcy in August 2022 after allegedly scamming hundreds of investors out of north of $40 million.
While the 25-year-old Whitby, Ont., resident has so far appeared to be at the helm of the multimillion-dollar ordeal, Anna said she has reasons to believe he’s not alone in executing the alleged scheme and could be under the pressure of extortion.
“I just don't see [how] a 22-year-old kid, which is what he was at the time, would think up this grand plan of how we are going to go after these millionaires, billionaires, people who have decades of very successful business experience.”
Anna, an investor whose identity has been concealed for her safety, sits down with W5's Avery Haines for an interview in South America.
In 2021, a decade-long friend introduced Anna to Pleterski. She said she was hesitant to put money down, but the fact that she personally knew 10 other people who had already done so made her "feel safe," she said. She wired $75,000 to Pleterski.
Anna was further convinced when her friend shared a picture showing wads of cash worth $10,000 – earnings from investments with Pleterski.
In just six weeks, Pleterski told Anna that her $75,000 investment was worth $120,000. But to this day, she has never seen a penny of her investments returned.
Text messages Anna received from a friend who invested with Aiden Pleterski.
Facing financial trouble, Pleterski told Anna he was on the receiving end of extortion threats, she said.
“He was saying that these people would show up at his house, threatening to go after his family,” she said, adding that it mounted to the point where Pleterski hired private security.
Norman Groot, a fraud lawyer representing one of Pleterski’s investors, said his office has received information suggesting that individuals involved in organized crime invested with the 25-year-old, to move cash into cryptocurrency before withdrawing it on the other side.
“I just believe that they don't want their source of funds investigated,” he said.
Anna, an investor who handed $75,000 to Aiden Pleterski, speaks out in a W5 interview in South America.
In his view, Groot said he has no reason to believe a puppet master is working above Pleterski.
“I suspect there are other people that he coordinates his money laundering through and are holding crypto or cash but I don't think there is a mastermind above Aiden Pleterski,” Groot said.
‘Mentorship and coaching’
Over three days in December 2022, in which Pleterski was allegedly kidnapped and tortured for $3 million in ransom, he spoke of his relationship with his landlord, Sandeep Gupta – a relationship a judge later called “curious and complex.”
In an edited and anonymously released recording posted on social media, Pleterski said, “When I noticed a lot of things were going south, I went to ask and kind of seek mentorship and coaching from Sandeep Gupta.”
Pleterski’s lawyer has stated that some of the statements in that video were coerced.
Aiden Pleterski, a self-described crypto king from Whitby, Ont., is seen after a kidnapping (left) and in a prior image on a private jet (right).
W5 reached out to Gupta for comment several times but received no response.
As part of Pleterski’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, Gupta underwent a court-ordered examination last February. In it, he said the pair’s relationship evolved from a landlord to a coach when Pleterski started facing financial trouble and falling behind on his monthly $45,000 rent at a Burlington mansion he lived in for close to a year until June 2022.
“I had to look at something to protect our investment,” Gupta, who holds the position of president at Sunray Group of Hotels Inc., said at the time.
To do so, Gupta explained, he moved Pleterski into another property. “I literally thought that he was going to be harmed … it was something that was no skin off our back,” he said.
The Burlington, Ont. mansion Aiden Pleterski paid $45,000 a month in rent to live in (Youtube).
Just days before he was kidnapped, Pleterski called Gupta a mentor in his own examination. When he was eventually released, the alleged kidnappers dropped him off near Gupta’s house.
“I don't know why he was released there,” Gupta said last February.
When asked in an interview with W5 to reflect on the events that have unfolded over the last two years, Groot, as a fraud recovery lawyer, said the key to the hearts of investors was they felt Pleterski was “trustworthy and reliable.”
“Any sort of fraud case takes some trust and then some deceit,” he said.
W5 will have an investigation into the so-called ‘Crypto King” Aiden Pleterski this week. You can watch ‘The Crypto Bros’ on Saturday at 7 p.m. EST.
