Speaker 1 [00:00]: A singer.
Speaker 2 [00:01]: Just no, I’m… that was it. Yeah, I just don’t want to pronounce the words loud and wrong, so quiet and wrong is okay.
Speaker 3 [00:11]: Yeah, so diarrhea… yeah, we didn’t even hug hello. We didn’t wait. I have to get up.
Speaker 1 [00:17]: Uh, all of us? No, not you. F***. Make case, I’ll never walk to you. Make case, I’m having to get away. Make case, I’m having to get special, huh? Pack your body bags, we’re going on a Slaycation. These are murders and mysterious deaths that happen while you’re on vacation.
Speaker 1 [00:41]: I am your host, Adam Tex Davis. And as always, I’m joined by my lovely wife, Kim. Mwah! Hi, honey. And my business partner and work wife, Jerry. Hey, what’s up?
Speaker 3 [00:55]: I’m feeling tolerable.
Speaker 1 [00:59]: Tolerable is the new good.
Speaker 2 [01:00]: It really is. It really, really is. I love tolerance.
Speaker 3 [01:05]: It’s the new, it is the new good. It’s the new standard. It really is.
Speaker 1 [01:08]: You know what? If you’re tolerating, then that’s good enough. Sometimes good enough is good enough. I’m already laughing. I don’t even know why.
Speaker 3 [01:17]: This is funny. I just think all of our nicknames—the woman, the husband, the tolerable one—it all just cracks me up. Someone wrote an amazing review. Very long. JD heard. I want it. Was it really one of you? No, because this review is like the one that I would pay someone I know to write.
Speaker 3 [01:35]: This is the article. This is the review. It feels like an article, but I don’t know who JD Hurt is. Right, but it seems like they got us confused, you and me.
Speaker 1 [01:52]: I don’t know anything. I mean, yes, I get corrected constantly by the woman, but that’s at home.
Speaker 2 [01:58]: And you are the bumbling one that does think they know the facts. No, but I don’t know the facts in this. No, I’m just talking about our lives.
Speaker 1 [02:05]: Haha, it feels like the persona. Yeah, they have us a little bit confused.
Speaker 3 [02:09]: If they did confuse us, I’m kind of sad because I think then your description is much better than mine. They referred to the tolerable one as the equivalent of a reliable flashlight you wish you had during a power outage, always on point with just enough wit to keep you hanging on to every word.
Speaker 3 [02:25]: But then the husband is your dad trying to tell a ghost story but ending up on a tangent about taxes. He’s a clumsy detective with lovable quirks and exasperated sighs when corrected by the woman. So I never talk about taxes.
Speaker 3 [02:38]: Okay. And you, I do look like the accountant in my photos. But an adorable, adorable accountant. I’ll do your taxes and hang out in a park. Okay. So, but this review is either, either someone really loves us, or someone was like, ChatGPT, write a review of my favorite show.
Speaker 3 [02:56]: Right. And make sure it’s really long. Because Slaycation is not just a podcast; it’s an experience. I love that. It’s a little over the top, but I love it. Oh my God. It’s an experience where you get to hear these three hosts bicker, banter, and bond.
Speaker 3 [03:08]: We bicker. Okay. Over stories of ill-fated vacations, all while making you feel like a part of their quirky crime-solving family. It’s like taking a mental vacation with the Addams Family. So if you’re up for some sun, sea, and mysteriously missing suntan lotion, give Slaycation a listen.
Speaker 3 [03:24]: And remember, next time you pack for a vacation, include this podcast. Oh, I love that. Thank you, JD. And these are just highlights. Thank you. Thank you, JD Hurt. There was another one. There’s another wonderful review.
Speaker 3 [03:38]: Kim, this one, I just, I hope you haven’t seen this one because I want to hear your reaction. I have not.
Speaker 1 [03:45]: I have not really gravitated towards the reviews. Good. I will say that.
Speaker 3 [03:50]: Good, because that makes it more fun for me to read your following. Yes, you gotta read this. This is from FuryKing7, who loves the show and gives us five stars. I love the banter, and I find it hilarious.
Speaker 3 [04:03]: I enjoy the way the crime is explained and the opinions. I’m uncomfortable with Kim interrupting Jerry all the time, though. It leaves me wondering what he thinks about that.
Speaker 1 [04:12]: Jerry, what do you think about this?
Speaker 3 [04:14]: I’m glad someone wrote in about this because this has been something I’ve wanted to talk about for some time, and this is one of those openings. You know, Kim, it really has made me very comfortable for a very long time.
Speaker 3 [04:23]: I’m sorry. Just interrupting. It’s just… I’m sorry. Apology accepted. God. What? I feel you’re being sarcastic. No.
Speaker 1 [04:35]: Why do you interrupt Jerry all the time? I don’t know, I guess.
Speaker 2 [04:37]: It’s just how I’m wired.
Speaker 3 [04:40]: Because I’m wrong all the time.
Speaker 2 [04:43]: You’d figure I’d be used to that.
Speaker 1 [04:45]: Yeah, well, I’m just glad not to be the only interrupter.
Speaker 3 [04:51]: Oh, that’s right. You’ve been accused of the Maximus Interruptus.
Speaker 1 [04:55]: I do interrupt all the time, but, uh, interesting. Well, okay. So one last thing, obviously our Slaycators Only group on Facebook is going amazingly. We have well over a hundred people now. Hey y’all.
Speaker 1 [05:10]: You guys are so fun and so funny. They want to do a meetup. It’s hilarious in real life. Yeah. They’re like, we got to do a Slaycators group meetup. Then someone said we should get insurance on each other and see who’s the last one standing.
Speaker 1 [05:23]: Okay. Last one.
Speaker 2 [05:24]: That’s taken a little too far, right?
Speaker 1 [05:26]: That’s what somebody else said, they were like…
Speaker 3 [05:30]: Last one standing is a little bit extreme for me.
Speaker 2 [05:33]: Invite people that you’re like, yeah, we could do it. Hey, what are you doing? Wanna come on out?
Speaker 1 [05:38]: Yeah. And then somebody was like, as long as I could buy an ankle bracelet and weed from the guy in the sand, that’s hilarious. Somebody else said we must go kayaking. And I think I wrote like, with or without plugs, you know, it’s like, they are just having a ball on Slaycators Only.
Speaker 1 [05:54]: So yeah. Angela Graswold is it?
Speaker 3 [05:56]: Out and free. We could organize a kayaking trip with her.
Speaker 1 [05:59]: Oh, yeah, why not? Okay. And then the other thing is, uh, there’s calls out for merch. So we are going to work on that. We’re going to get some merch going with the logo, with pack, your body bags, with tolerable is the new good, with more Kim, all the fun stuff.
Speaker 1 [06:20]: So we, yeah, we’re going to, we’re going to work on that. Somebody says, like, you got to have socks. You got to make Slaycation socks. And when you’re at the airport and they make you take your shoes off, you have your Slaycation socks.
Speaker 1 [06:28]: That’s amazing. Anyway, with all that said…
Speaker 2 [06:33]: Creativity.
Speaker 1 [06:35]: Yeah. So yeah, join Slaycators Only on Facebook or just our Facebook page. And I guess we’ve been talking for a while. Let’s get into the case, right? Yes. Kimmy, where will we be slaycating today? Where?
Speaker 2 [06:48]: Well, today we are slaycating in what is known as India’s Golden Triangle, a popular tourist circuit making the rounds of three vibrant cities in the northwestern part of India, which gets its name from the triangular shape formed by the three locations of these cities on a map.
Speaker 2 [07:09]: So newlywed Jennifer Robertson could not have foreseen, much less imagine, the profound impact swiping right on Tinder could have had that fateful day in 2014. She chose the Golden Triangle? In a matter of speaking.
Speaker 2 [07:27]: Okay. So Gerald William Cotton, CEO and founder of Quadriga CX, a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange, and Jennifer Kathleen Margaret Robertson, a Canadian real estate developer, both 30 and Canadian nationals, legally married on June 8th, 2018.
Speaker 2 [07:51]: But what Jennifer would recall as her dream wedding would take place in a beautiful Scottish castle with family and friends on a mild fall day in October of 2018. So in the early days of December 2018, the honeymoon would commence and the excited couple would board a plane from Canada and fly first class to India’s capital, New Delhi, their first stop on their exotic adventure.
Speaker 2 [08:21]: Now, New Delhi is described as chaotic and colorful and full of sensory overload by TripAdvisor and offers an array of things to do and experience. Two stars. JD Hurt gives it five stars. Well, anyway, New Delhi provides the perfect blend of historical and modern spots like the Landmark War Memorial, the India Gate, and situated in the heart of South Delhi is the Baha’i House of Worship, the Lotus Temple recognized for its unique flower-like design.
Speaker 2 [08:58]: You can stroll through the old New Delhi neighborhood where people, cows, and rickshaws all share the same road. A day trip to the Qutub Minar, known for its Indo-Islamic style architecture and one of the most visited tourist spots in the city, Qutub Minar, rich in its historical significance, is a grand and imposing structure that stands about 238 feet tall and holds the title as the tallest brick minaret in the world.
Speaker 2 [09:31]: Honeymooners may stroll through the beautifully maintained gardens and enjoy the serene environment surrounding the complex.
Speaker 3 [09:41]: Call now.
Speaker 1 [09:41]: Reserve your room. I was going to say, Kim, Kim is actually working for TripAdvisor.
Speaker 3 [09:47]: Kim’s trying to get you to take her to this place.
Speaker 1 [09:49]: Let’s see how this works out.
Speaker 2 [09:51]: Just maybe not. Well, I have to say, climbing, you used to could climb this structure. It has a, they have like 200 stairs or even more, but it’s been closed because of a stampede that happened in 1981.
Speaker 2 [10:05]: Oh. So. You’re not climbing 200 stairs. No, I’m not. All right, so the newlyweds, their next stop was a three-hour car ride to Agra, home to the iconic Taj Mahal. Oh. Yes, which is an ivory marble mausoleum with its rich and fascinating history of love and loss and is noted as one of the seven wonders in the world.
Speaker 3 [10:31]: I thought the Taj Mahal was in Atlantic City.
Speaker 2 [10:34]: Now that’s been shuttered for a while. Yeah. No, not that one. That is not. No, that is not.
Speaker 1 [10:40]: Actually, I think that’s the hard rock now. Oh, all right.
Speaker 3 [10:43]: Not that Taj Mahal. There’s another one. They put another one in India. No, the Taj Mahal in India is one of the seven wonders of the world. So Gerald and Jennifer enjoyed a romantic dinner for two on the balcony of their hotel room overlooking the Taj Mahal.
Speaker 2 [11:02]: This remarkable structure was commissioned by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a symbol of love to immortalize his wife Mumtaz who died in childbirth. The Taj Mahal or their hotel? The Taj Mahal.
Speaker 3 [11:21]: You know it’s the Taj.
Speaker 2 [11:23]: Well, you just want to be sure, I understand.
Speaker 3 [11:25]: I love that you have that detail, by the way. I didn’t know that. That’s lovely.
Speaker 2 [11:28]: It’s interesting. I didn’t realize it was Muslim either. Yeah, it is a fascinating detail. Next on the honeymooners’ itinerary was Jaipur, a city in the state of Rajasthan, India, and is called the Pink City due to the rose-colored hue of the many buildings.
Speaker 2 [11:47]: The couple planned to do a hot air balloon tour of the Pink City, visit the Monkey Temple, which is a large Hindu temple complex that hosts monkey colonies.
Speaker 1 [12:00]: Wow, that sounds fun. Yeah, you’re actually making me want to go to.
Speaker 2 [12:03]: It’s adorable, right? Yeah, I actually looked it up and there are just all these monkeys just hanging out with people. It’s actually really cute. So aside from the blissful and amorous celebration of a new marriage, this trip was strategically timed as the newlyweds had another function that coincided with their honeymoon.
Speaker 2 [12:26]: And that was the official opening of the Jennifer Robertson and Gerald Cotton Home for Orphan Children. In India? Yes. Oh, wow. Yes, this would be the grand opening in a sense and a formal acknowledgment of the couple’s charitable endeavors.
Speaker 2 [12:46]: So they’re like really rich? Yes.
Speaker 1 [12:48]: Okay.
Speaker 2 [12:49]: Yes, it is very safe to surmise that they are doing very well. Gerald’s company, Quadriga, had become wildly successful. And what was it? It was a Bitcoin exchange company. Corrypto. Corrypto, yes. So the couple, with the help of Angel House, a humanitarian organization that would help facilitate the construction of an orphanage to be built in India, that was another reason that they were there.
Speaker 2 [13:21]: Why?
Speaker 1 [13:22]: India. I’m just curious, like they’re Canadian, right? Yeah. Let’s keep that in mind. Oh, I’ll keep that question in mind. Oh, is it so that they could write off the big, the.
Speaker 2 [13:33]: Could open an orphanage. Right. Because they care. Oh. So, yes.
Speaker 3 [13:38]: Just hold on to that. We’re going to, why India becomes an important question later.
Speaker 1 [13:43]: Okay. That’s the name of my book I’m writing.
Speaker 2 [13:47]: So, interestingly enough, Jennifer had actually traveled with 12 teddy bears in which to present to each child at the orphanage for the opening, and this would take place at the final leg of this particular…
Speaker 1 [14:04]: Trip. Okay. So small orphanage. Yeah. 12. It is a small orphanage. Okay. Yeah. Not even a baker’s dozen. Just, just a dozen. Is it a lottery?
Speaker 3 [14:14]: Well, she was going to take more, but they only allowed a certain number of checked bags.
Speaker 1 [14:17]: Exactly. I can only bring 12 teddy bears. Okay. Sorry.
Speaker 2 [14:25]: I’m reeling it in, honey. Okay, good for you, for reeling it in without me having to say it, I love that. Anyway, so it was about 5 p.m. when the plane touched down at Jaipur International Airport on the evening of December 8th, 2018.
Speaker 2 [14:41]: A luxury SUV waited for the couple, met them, and drove them to their lodgings. It was about 6:30 and Gerald and Jennifer checked into their exquisite five-star hotel resort where they were warmly greeted by hotel staff and taken to their private villa, complete with canopied four-poster bed, a view of the courtyard with its first-class world amenities and luxurious accommodations.
Speaker 2 [15:10]: An acknowledgment of their nuptials was a sign that spelled out the word “Congrats,” arranged in yellow flower petals on the room’s dresser. And believe it or not, a warm rose petal bath had already been drawn and was ready and waiting.
Speaker 2 [15:28]: Could you imagine going to a hotel and having your bath ready? Yeah, you’d walk in, you’d be like, too cold. Yeah, I would, but still, the gesture is really nice.
Speaker 1 [15:40]: Yeah, I know you’d be immediately draining it and going to get back up with what’s going on.
Speaker 3 [15:45]: Why are all these flowers in the bath? Gross slating?
Speaker 1 [15:49]: All right. All right. That’s who I am. I am the Kim who can’t take a shower or a bath unless it’s literally, you can make tea with the water. Like it’s got to be, your skin has to be melting off like the end of Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1 [16:01]: No, absolutely. That’s me. We try to take a shower together and I’m just like standing off to the other side away from the water.
Speaker 3 [16:10]: Just a skull. Cheers. Their skin’s melting.
Speaker 1 [16:12]: Come on, you’d be hurt less than an acid bath.
Speaker 2 [16:16]: Oh, you make it sound so romantic. Anyway. So earlier that afternoon, when boarding their flight, Gerald was complaining that he was not feeling well and had informed his wife that his stomach was really hurting.
Speaker 2 [16:33]: Having been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease six years earlier, it wasn’t uncommon to have these flare-ups. So Gerald had decided that he would rest, just give his body a chance to reset after the journey.
Speaker 2 [16:48]: Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to fare much better, even after resting. And after trying to pull it together, it just wasn’t happening. And it was clear he was going to need to take a visit to the ER.
Speaker 2 [17:06]: Was he throwing up, or was he just in great pain?
Speaker 3 [17:10]: He was starting to have pretty violent diarrhea, and Crohn’s, because Crohn’s is just a really bad inflammation of your whole gastric system or your GI tract.
Speaker 1 [17:23]: Just inflamed. Now they’ve been in India, how many days? They’ve been in India for…
Speaker 2 [17:28]: At least two or three. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they’d already had, you know, made a couple of stops and now they were going to enjoy, you know, like, yes, it was, it was very possible.
Speaker 1 [17:40]: You’re just not used to certain things. Yeah, I mean, that’s certainly something that was considered, which is I guess why it was like, you know what, let me lay down, let me rest, and then it was like, you know, we did, they’re going to take him to the hospital, right?
Speaker 3 [17:52]: And the thing with Crohn’s is because it’s like an inflammation of your whole insides, things can happen where you can actually get septic shock, you know, where like just stuff that’s not supposed to come out starts coming into your blood and really messing with your body.
Speaker 3 [18:08]: So it is a thing, like, even if they thought it might’ve just been the food and water because he has Crohn’s disease, it was like, let’s go have this checked out.
Speaker 2 [18:16]: Right, right. Of course, if it was Adam and his aversion to hospitals, and he’d be like, you know, let’s have some yogurt. Maybe that’ll help.
Speaker 3 [18:27]: I mean, yogurt fixes a lot of things. It does!
Speaker 2 [18:29]: It does. I was having a gallbladder attack, and we’re in California, and I was like, oh my God, I think I have to go to the ER. And he was like, no, no, we’re not here.
Speaker 3 [18:37]: And he just gave you yogurt. Let’s go to Pinkberry. That’s not even real yogurt. No, that’s exactly what happened. Did it help? Or did you end up in the ER? Adly.
Speaker 2 [18:46]: It did.
Speaker 3 [18:48]: Wow, Dr. Davis, Dr. Davis.
Speaker 1 [18:53]: And then it didn’t help, and then she snuck out to the ER anyway. She just likes to go to the ER.
Speaker 2 [18:58]: No, that is, look, I’m about not being in pain, all right? That’s how I’m living. I don’t know about him, but I’m not trying to be in pain, and, you know.
Speaker 1 [19:09]: Why did you marry me? Oh my God. Yes, we were.
Speaker 3 [19:16]: K .S. Crohn’s, he’s having diarrhea and severe cramps.
Speaker 2 [19:20]: Yeah. And at this point, he could barely walk. So it was clear that he was going to need some medical attention. Right. And the next…
Speaker 1 [19:28]: Stay with the orphanage thing or was it coming up? Okay.
Speaker 2 [19:31]: They were a few days out from that, but it was hot air ballooning. It was on the horizon. You don’t want to have diarrhea in a hot air balloon.
Speaker 1 [19:39]: Boom.
Speaker 3 [19:41]: Just to show you, that is not the place. Well, you know, or the time. If it’s sinking, it’s one thing. Lighten the load.
Speaker 1 [19:50]: Oh, the humans.
Speaker 2 [19:52]: Look out below. You guys. So, Jennifer, she reaches out to the concierge and she’s informing hotel personnel that her husband is ill and in need of medical attention and to call an ambulance. The thing is, though, in India, an ambulance takes a really long time to get there.
Speaker 2 [20:16]: Well, to get to the hospital, just because of the traffic. I mean, when you’ve got cows on the road, you can just imagine that it’s going to take a while. So, the hotel staff arranged to give them a ride to the hospital.
Speaker 2 [20:33]: Okay. And they arrived at a hospital called the Fortis Escorts Hospital. And it was a private modern facility. Gerald was in a great deal of pain. He was vomiting and was reportedly in so much pain that his wife stated that when she went to put a blanket on him, he actually screamed because his body was just so sensitive that even the blanket touching him caused pain.
Speaker 1 [21:03]: So this feels like not just Crohn’s disease; this feels like something… it’s, yeah, it could be. Right, right. All right, so the hospital, the hotel is driving him to the right. Yeah?
Speaker 2 [21:15]: Yeah, the hotel, he’s arrived at the hospital, the hotel got him there, a port was prepared for which Gerald would receive fluids and medications through the IV, and his wife on a cot stayed with him, and they both would hunker down and have a very sleepless and long miserable night.
Speaker 1 [21:38]: Great. Time for a break and a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 [21:44]: Hi, I’m Matt Harris. Seton Tucker and I host the podcast Impact of Influence, which for two years covered in-depth, Alec Murdoch, who was eventually convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul.
Speaker 4 [21:57]: That story continues to evolve, and we will cover that. Plus, we will tell you stories of other true crime events that have happened in the South. Please join us on Impact of Influence and give us a follow on the Impact of Influence Facebook page.
Speaker 3 [22:15]: And…
Speaker 2 [22:15]: …we’re back, welcome. All right, so the following morning, Gerald would have an abdominal x-ray and receive medications and fluids, and he would ask his wife to retrieve his laptop, which he had with him always. Yeah, this was probably going…
Speaker 3 [22:32]: …anywhere without his laptop. Right. Yes.
Speaker 2 [22:34]: This would probably be the longest stretch, probably in his life, where he was not on his computer, somehow connected. So she headed back to the hotel, took that opportunity to freshen up, and picked up Gerald’s computer and a change of clothes.
Speaker 2 [22:52]: And the hotel very graciously offered someone to drive her back to the hospital. And the couple had a brief back-and-forth text exchange while she was en route. She gets there and his condition has taken a serious turn.
Speaker 2 [23:13]: He would flatline twice, be resuscitated, but the third time they would not be able to revive him. Jesus. On December 9th, 2018, at 7:26 p.m., Gerald William Cotton was pronounced dead. The cause of death was listed as septic shock, peritonitis, and an intestinal obstruction with the listed injury disease as complications from Crohn’s disease.
Speaker 1 [23:52]: Okay, so they’re saying the complications were from the Crohn’s disease. Yes. At least initially.
Speaker 3 [23:57]: Yeah, they’re saying that the Crohn’s disease, the inflammation, had caused septic shock. And the septic shock, what happens with septic shock is you get really low blood pressure, which can lead to cardiac arrest.
Speaker 3 [24:08]: So he essentially had three heart attacks, if you want to sort of simplify what happened. That’s right. Two of them he was revived from, the third one he…
Speaker 1 [24:16]: Okay, and he was sure she made it back to see him or now or she…
Speaker 2 [24:19]: She did. In fact, she would say in her book that she was glad that the last words they would say to each other were “I love you.”
Speaker 1 [24:23]: Okay, wasn’t “how’s the crypto doing?” No, but that would become her life.
Speaker 3 [24:33]: That would have been good if he’d helped with that information. Yes. He was 30 years old. 30? Yeah, really.
Speaker 1 [24:40]: All right. Well, that’s another episode.
Speaker 2 [24:45]: Oh, there’s more. So, Gerald’s company, he was one of the co-founders and the CEO of Quadriga, which was at one time one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. So he didn’t start the company.
Speaker 1 [25:08]: He did. He did start it. He started it with a co-founder.
Speaker 2 [25:10]: I’m the co-founder.
Speaker 3 [25:11]: Co-founder with a guy named Michael Petrine. The reason it became so big is they started it back in the earlier days of the more current crypto boom. At the time, if you wanted to buy crypto, it was very complicated because you needed a 21 or 28-character-long key, you had to enter it in a certain way.
Speaker 3 [25:35]: It was really wonky. You had to really be techy to do it. The kind of trick to becoming big is that Gerald and his co-founder were like, we’ll make it easy for people to invest in crypto. All you have to do is come to our exchange, give us your Canadian dollars, tell us what crypto you want to buy, and you’ll have your crypto.
Speaker 3 [25:57]: The way that they were doing that is that you never…you, the person coming to Quadriga Exchange, you never actually had the keys. There’s a saying in crypto that says, “no keys, no crypto,” meaning all the money that they were getting was then used to buy crypto through Quadriga’s accounts.
Speaker 3 [26:20]: Quadriga owned the crypto, and you were essentially on account that said you had X, Y, and Z. The thing that people love about crypto is if you want your money to do anything, you have it, you use your crypto keys, the blockchain, and you can do whatever you want with it.
Speaker 3 26:38
With Quadriga, if you had your money there, you had to ask them to withdraw the money. So it wasn’t real. In a sense, it was like when you buy stocks through a broker and they hold the stocks for you.
Speaker 3 26:55
But that’s obviously a much more regulated situation than crypto. So that’s how they became so big. As crypto got more and more popular, people were like, what’s the easy way to do it, Quadriga? And so tons of money was coming in, and that is how he was making so much money.
Speaker 2 27:13
I mean Bitcoin is it’s actually stored in a digital wallet, which like Jerry mentioned is protected by passwords and those passwords are called private keys and The private key is a random string of 64 letters and numbers Okay, it can’t be overstated if you lose that key You are fucked right you are no, no, no, I don’t think you understand.
Speaker 2 27:42
No, no, I do
Speaker 1 27:45
There’s a famous case, right? Quite a few famous cases.
Speaker 3 27:49
There was a guy who’d bought crypto. It was a Bitcoin earlier. I don’t remember how much. It was something like 4 ,000 coins when they were like a penny. This was like $400, whatever that is. Back in the day, you would keep…
Speaker 3 28:05
It’s called cold wallets versus hot wallets, right? So a crypto… We both learned… She’s saying yes because… I love that Kim knows this shit. Kim and I both learned that.
Speaker 1 28:15
I learned a lot about crypto on this. I was like, yeah.
Speaker 2 28:18
I didn’t know.
Speaker 3 28:19
Did you know I knew some of it, but like some of it. I’m like well. What is the
Speaker 1 28:23
age by the way what is the age where people like there’s the care about crypto and then you turn a certain age and you don’t give a shit and you think it’s all you know it took
Speaker 3 28:31
It depends on how much Bitcoin is going for at the time. The more, the higher the price of the Bitcoin, the older the age range gets because people get excited about it.
Speaker 1 28:41
It’s like 45 to 49 is like the, you know, it’s like, I don’t have time to learn this shit. Like fuck it. It’s not real money. And then other people are like, like the dollar bill in your pocket, this random scrap of paper is worth anything.
Speaker 1 28:55
Like, so it’s like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 28:57
I will say the more that I dug into this case came out of a few other experiences, the more I learned about it and the more I learned about crypto, the more it just sounds like a stupid game.
Speaker 2 29:05
Yes, exactly. Honestly, like it sounds like a.
Speaker 3 29:07
video game unless like real. Yeah. Um, so cold wallets.
Speaker 1 29:12
I was just gonna say also I can’t stress how soon Kim would lose that 64 -digit number within the first hour He’s not lying. You would get it and then
Speaker 3 29:22
Well, that’s these famous stories. Back in the day, you had to keep the key on a hard drive or something. And so then people who bought crypto 15, 20 years ago whenever it started, and it wasn’t worth anything for a very long time, like throughout their hard drive or lost their hard drives.
Speaker 3 29:38
And then all of a sudden, they’re like, wait, I bought a thousand Bitcoins and a Bitcoin’s worth $30 ,000. So I have $30 million. I think that’s math is right, maybe. Sitting on a hard drive, but I can’t find it.
Speaker 3 29:50
And there’s one person who’s paying people to go through a dump for looking for the drive.
Speaker 1 29:58
I was talking about Hot Wallets and Cold Wallets before Kim interrupted.
Speaker 3 30:02
Fury Rider, whatever your name is, please note, Kim’s interrupting me and it’s, it is very awkward. It’s our version of a swear jar. So a cold wallet is when you keep your keys on a device like a hard drive or a thumb drive that is not connected to the internet.
Speaker 3 30:19
A hot wallet is when you store your keys on something that is connected to the internet like a computer. The reason you call it that is like the cold wallet means you can’t, it can’t be hacked because it’s physically not connected to the internet.
Speaker 3 30:31
So it’s like in your drawer or whatever, right? But a hot wallet can be hacked, okay? So for these kind of exchanges like Quadriga, whoever’s running them has to keep the master keys on a cold wallet because you can’t risk having, you know, the whole whatever it was like $2 billion or $3 billion that are on the exchange can’t risk being hacked, right?
Speaker 3 30:54
So they’re kept in a cold wallet.
Speaker 1 30:56
Would they be written on a scrap of paper with knitting patterns and phone numbers?
Speaker 2 31:01
If they belong to me, the answer would be yes. But here’s the thing with this case, because it really is a clusterfuck. So it turns out Gerald dies and is the only one with those passwords.
Speaker 3 31:27
Yeah, Gerald is the only one with the keys that run the Quadriga account and they’re in a cold wallet somewhere. And at the time of his death, there is a quarter of a billion dollars, also known as 250 million Canadian dollars, so 42 US dollars.
Speaker 3 31:47
Sitting, sorry Canada. So there’s 250 million Canadian dollars sitting in Quadriga’s accounts.
Speaker 1 31:56
And nobody at Quadratica…
Speaker 2 31:57
can get to it. There’s nobody in Quadriga but him.
Speaker 3 32:00
Yeah, turns out he is Quadriga, and everything, the reason he’s always on his laptop is the entire business is run by him from his laptop. That is Quadriga. Right. Him and his laptop. There’s no other…
Speaker 3 32:13
Gotcha. There’s no other… At this time. Right. There’s actually, well, there’s a couple of people that kind of work with him, but there’s not like… Right. There’s not like an office with Quadriga people.
Speaker 2 32:23
Right, exactly. There’s no second in command, really. There’s nobody that… So don’t go to India, don’t go higher, ballooning, don’t… No, there’s nobody that also has the access or the information in the event of…
Speaker 1 32:40
Right, but it’s not even on the laptop because you’re saying it’s a cold wallet. So it’s like literally, could be anywhere. Could be anywhere.
Speaker 3 32:46
And there’s a thing, so this is a fun term that I learned. Did you see this term dead man switch? Yes! Cool, right? I was like, what’s a dead man switch? That’s…
Speaker 1 32:54
It’s a movie from 1945, starring Victor Mature. Anyway, sorry.
Speaker 2 33:00
Bye -bye.
Speaker 3 33:01
Hmm, might be the wrong, might be the right joke, wrong show.
Speaker 1 33:04
No, it’s gonna it’s gonna kill
Speaker 3 33:08
Yeah, you slate it. Okay, enough of that. So a dead man switch is a thing that exists in crypto exchanges that the idea being in all these exchanges, someone, you know, Coinbase, in all these big exchanges theoretically have a master key and a cold wallet.
Speaker 3 33:28
And the idea is that a dead man switch means if the account, if those keys aren’t, because those keys are being used all the time to like run the exchange, if they’re not used in a certain amount of time, which is typically 30 days, they switched, they will, the system will spit out a new set of keys to a second person.
Speaker 3 33:45
Second in command, there’s somebody appointed.
Speaker 2 33:48
typically.
Speaker 3 33:49
And I was like, well, where did that term come from? And it actually came from back in the day with electric, with streetcars and trains. And the idea was you had the conductor of the train always had their, it was like usually their foot on a pedal that if they were to die, right, and because the trains are running through the city, so if they die and their foot comes off that pedal, that is the dead man switch and it stops the train.
Speaker 3 34:14
So it’s kind of a backup plan for if someone dies. Right. There was no dead man switch. There was none. There was no dead man switch. For Quadriga, turns out.
Speaker 2 34:25
And there were waiting, maybe something would come in the mail. Who’s waiting?
Speaker 1 34:31
That was the people who.
Speaker 3 34:34
The Canadian government’s waiting, right, because they’ve got – it was like 100 ,000 people were invested in it. I mean, it was a huge number of people had money.
Speaker 1 34:45
and his wife knows nothing about any of this. Nothing.
Speaker 3 34:48
His wife knows nothing.
Speaker 1 34:48
Did they check the 12 teddy bears?
Speaker 3 34:52
Well, so back in India, right? So some weird things happened, right? So he dies in this hospital. She goes back to the hotel. It can’t help me because I’ve read a few different versions of this. Yeah, there was so many different versions.
Speaker 3 35:06
There’s a lot, but it seems like what happened was the hospital said to her, can we do an autopsy? And she said no. Right. And then she declined that. And then they said, well, we want to do an autopsy.
Speaker 3 35:23
Like we feel like we should. And it’s unclear why this happened. Some people say it’s because she was worried they would do an autopsy without her permission, but she basically brings the body back to the hotel.
Speaker 1 35:36
Oh, you can do that.
Speaker 2 35:37
Well, I guess they’re there.
Speaker 3 35:40
You can’t you know you can’t really just walk out of it. I mean, I don’t know I don’t think you can walk out of a hospital with a dead body and go to a hotel and in the States I mean how did
Speaker 1 35:48
How’s she doing that? Slumped over her shoulder?
Speaker 3 35:51
No, they sent it. They sent the body. So then she tries to get someone to embalm the body because in order to bring a body back to Canada out of India, you have to have the body embalmed to be able to travel on a plane.
Speaker 3 36:11
Gotcha. They then say you have to bring the body back to this hospital for the embalming. So now it’s like weekend at Bernie’s, right? So they take the body back to the hospital and there they say we don’t want anything to do with this.
Speaker 3 36:32
Basically at this point, that’s like a legit decent hospital and they’re like, we actually, this all seems weird.
Speaker 2 36:38
and too shady.
Speaker 3 36:39
We just don’t want anything to do with it. So then she finds a smaller, more, I guess rural hospital that says.
Speaker 2 36:48
I read that it was a medical school. A school, it was a school, right, it was students. Right, and they were able to, because there’s not the same regulations that are imparted in, I guess, more professional embalming settings.
Speaker 1 37:05
a school. Yeah. Oh, that’s like when you get the $5, you get the haircut from the barber school. It’s like, pretty much. Yeah. The chop off your ear, but hey, it costs $3. Yeah.
Speaker 3 37:14
Well, they agreed to embalm him, and so at this point she has the certificate of death, the certificate that says she declined the autopsy, and the embalmed body, and so she’s able to go back to Canada.
Speaker 3 37:27
Did they ever open up the orphanage?
Speaker 2 37:31
They did. Well, and they were not able to obviously make the. Presentation.
Speaker 3 37:37
That’s all the orphanages, I mean, we could talk about it, but the answer is that they did help open it. And then because of all of the craziness that ensues with this company and the money, and they’re unable to continue supporting it.
Speaker 3 37:51
And so the orphanage actually gets kind of stuck, kind of halfway done. They’re like behind, they’re currently like behind on their payment. I mean, it’s like, it’s not good. Gotcha. Right. So she flies back to Canada with his embalmed body, and they have a funeral.
Speaker 2 38:11
Small little family funeral, right, right. Close casket.
Speaker 1 38:16
Yeah, why’d you look at each other when you say closed -cast me?
Speaker 2 38:22
No, because Jerry and I were just acknowledging that… Eyebrows raised.
Speaker 3 38:27
Well, it’s just, if you think about like him was quarreling an imaginary mustache, they closed gasket. I’m going to get it. I’m talking to you. Does that mean I need another washing? Um, I mean, you kind of, it just, it kind of right.
Speaker 3 38:47
Well, nobody’s ever seen him dead, I guess is the way to put it. Right.
Speaker 2 38:53
That is the key.
Speaker 3 38:54
key here is the crux is no one has he died in India. She actually never really, she can’t say for sure that she ever saw his body because it was always being transported in bags. Right.
Speaker 2 39:08
And you have to understand that we have a total of 76 ,000 clients who are like, where the fuck is my money?
Speaker 3 39:20
Right?
Speaker 1 39:21
And so here’s my imaginary Bitcoin money.
Speaker 2 39:25
but you had people that put in their life savings.
Speaker 3 39:30
Yeah. And the thing is, you know, some crypto exchanges, as we’re aware, from like the Sam Bankman freed story and stuff like that are very sketchy. They’re kind of bullshitty, right? Some, but not all.
Speaker 3 39:43
There are, there are a few that are, you know, a little more, not necessarily regulated, but like they’ve been around for a while. Like they have offices. There’s like a, there’s a company behind it, right?
Speaker 1 39:55
I am north of the age of believing in any of it.
Speaker 3 39:58
Which is totally reasonable, but like you know sort of like Sam bank been freed who was essentially was him in like three people Running this billion dollar exchange from a house and I think in the Bahamas.
Speaker 3 40:09
It’s this guy’s doing the same thing He’s running this whole thing from his laptop, right? But it’s not just him, right? So he I think it’s important to take a second and talk about who he founded his company with Yeah, right cuz it was there was a person was a guy named Michael Patrick.
Speaker 3 40:22
Okay, who had two other?
Speaker 2 40:24
names before. He did. Yeah. He did have two other names. We’ll talk about that. Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 40:29
So the reason Gerald Cotton and Michael Patrick knew each other is that when Gerald was a teenager, he was trying to figure out how to make money online. Right, he was about 15. Yeah, he was 15 years old and really, really smart guy.
Speaker 3 40:44
And online he discovered this thing called, bear with me one second, I want to get the right name for it. The other forum he was on was called Talk Gold. His handle was Scepter. Right. And the device was called HYIP’s, High Yield Investment Programs.
Speaker 3 41:01
So he’s 15 years old and he finds all this stuff on these forums about selling high -yield investment programs. And the great thing is that they give you very, these are investment vehicles that give you very, very high rates of return.
Speaker 3 41:16
They’re unregulated and anonymous. They disclose little or no details about the investment or who was behind it, but they just yield lots of money. So if you put money in, you’re gonna get a bunch of money out of it and you don’t have to worry about it being reported anywhere.
Speaker 1 41:31
That’s what they say. Sounds completely legit, totally legit, right?
Speaker 3 41:34
It sounds like Bernie Madoff or any of these other guys, right?
Speaker 2 41:38
Can you say Ponzi -scape? Yes.
Speaker 1 41:41
Who doesn’t want to give their money to a 15 -year -old? Well, they don’t know you’re 15. Of course, I know.
Speaker 3 41:46
And the guy who helped him put this together and mentored him was Michael Petrine. And so Michael and him. Who was 16. He’s not that much older. He’s older. But not that much. And then the other thing they added, so you could pay them, they would use digital currency for this.
Speaker 3 42:04
So it’s untraceable with digital currency. And then they also set up a proxy system so your IP address would be hidden. So there’s no way when you’re doing business with these guys that anyone’s gonna know who you are, where you are, any of that.
Speaker 3 42:18
And they’re giving you very high yields. The only way that you can give consistently high yields to people on stuff like this is it’s a Ponzi scheme, right? So any money coming in, you pay out. The later you get into these things, the more you’re gonna get fucked when it collapses, okay?
Speaker 3 42:32
So these guys then learned about Bitcoin. And in November, 2013, Michael Petrine and Gerald Cotton founded Quadriga. This guy, Petrine, as Kim said, he had hit a couple of names before he was called Omar Denani.
Speaker 2 42:50
Omar Denani
Speaker 3 42:51
Yes. He had previously served 18 months in federal prison in the United States. And was deported. For identity theft charges. Yes. Deported to Canada.
Speaker 1 42:59
Yeah, keeping your money.
Speaker 3 43:01
Yeah, he had pled guilty to burglary and grand theft. He also had been called Omar Petrine and then changed it to Michael Petrine, okay? So he morphed himself from Omar Denani to Michael Petrine. Right.
Speaker 3 43:19
And what happened was because of his prior issues with the law, the Canadian authorities, when they started Kudriga, were like, huh, maybe this guy shouldn’t be involved in running a currency exchange.
Speaker 3 43:34
Right. But they didn’t realize that Gerald Cotton had also run Ponzi schemes. Right, and had his own shade. Yeah, they didn’t catch that part of it. No. Because he was doing a scepter on this forum. Scepter, right.
Speaker 3 43:48
So you got this one guy who’s done prison time for fraud and this kid who’s been running these Ponzi schemes online start this Kudriga.
Speaker 2 43:57
Gotcha. And what he would do, Gerald was, during that whole time, he would take money and then he would just close down the site and just kind of disappear.
Speaker 3 44:12
Right. So if you were to say like, Oh, I want high yield, right? So, you know, you have like a bunch of people 10, 20, 30, however many do the investment. They’re like, talking on your form about how much money they’ve made that gets other people excited.
Speaker 3 44:25
And people just keep giving you money and money. And at some point, you just disappear, because it’s online, it’s untraceable. And all the last money in.
Speaker 2 44:34
Yeah, that’s exactly he had a he had launched a website called SNS investments in which he executed this operation.
Speaker 1 44:42
Right. I’m so glad my fears of this are completely unfounded. That’s the best. All right, you know what? We’re going to find out more about this craziness after we come back after a quick break. And we’re back.
Speaker 2 44:58
and exhausted.
Speaker 3 45:01
It’s hot, but it’s cool in here, it’s cool in here at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio, the most optimal-
Speaker 1 45:08
Bitcoin, three people over the age of 50 talking about Bitcoin. Well.
Speaker 3 45:13
Yeah, so he was, like Kim said, he was running all these scams online, these Ponzi schemes. But because he’d never really been caught for it, he could be the public face of Quadriga. And they started to…
Speaker 1 45:29
There’s no scrutiny on Quadriga, Quadriga.
Speaker 3 45:32
It was very small initially right I mean
Speaker 2 45:36
And that only centered on just the nature of Bitcoin itself, not so much the people that were running it. Okay.
Speaker 3 45:43
Okay, so let me tell you, I’m going to read you a quote from Gerald Cotton. This is from when they started the Quadriga Bitcoin Exchange in 2014. Keep in mind, sorry for laughing, but I think this is all, this is just not going to make you feel any better about Bitcoin.
Speaker 3 45:59
So disrespectful. Yeah. So, you know, the thing that makes Bitcoin, if you’re going to make a good argument for Bitcoin, it’s that it is a currency that can be used by individuals without having to go through a central bank.
Speaker 3 46:12
Like you can use it anywhere. It’s a currency you can use like if you are someone who lives in a country where you can’t open a bank account for some reason, but you can have Bitcoin. So there are there are arguments to be made for it.
Speaker 3 46:24
And it is completely controlled, as Kim said earlier, by these like, you know, super long key strings of want to buy.
Speaker 1 46:32
People on the dark web, you could do that. Yes.
Speaker 3 46:35
That is where it started for sure. So Gerald Cotton said, we’re gonna make it really easy so you don’t have to deal with all that stuff. So we’re gonna store all the customer funds. Now you remember we talked about hot wallets being keys that you keep online and cold wallets are offline.
Speaker 3 46:55
He comes up with a new concept called paper wallets. Paper wallets. Paper wallets. Paper wallets are notes that he keeps of customer’s funds on pieces of paper in a safe deposit box. So he says, we do this so we just send money to you.
Speaker 3 47:13
So you and we don’t need to go to the bank every time we wanna put money into it. We just send our money from our Bitcoin app, record it directly on those paper wallets and keep it safe that way.
Speaker 1 47:25
I love that paper wallet is, it’s really just a notebook. It’s a notebook. Okay. Feels very safe. Maybe it’s like a diary with a little lock.
Speaker 3 47:35
Yeah, so they tried to raise money, that didn’t work. By 2016, there’s a few freelancers, there’s no office, no employees, and no bank accounts for Quadriga, okay? No bank accounts, right, because you don’t need a bank account for Bitcoin.
Speaker 1 47:52
You just need a laptop and a notebook and a case.
Speaker 3 47:56
The key? Somewhere. So what happened in 2017? Speculative frenzy on Bitcoin. That’s when it went from a coin to 20 ,000.
Speaker 1 48:10
Yeah. We were on set. We were shooting. We were a show. And then suddenly like our sound guy got up and said, I’m rich now. And left. Are you serious? He came back. Wait, really? Yeah. He was just like, Oh my God, I’m rich.
Speaker 1 48:25
And he turned off his like, he came back.
Speaker 3 48:30
I mean, he actually, which shows you how much he loves working with us, that he was, it was Bitcoin rich, but yeah, he did have this moment where he’s like, holy shit. Yeah. Wow. Just like $50 ,000 or whatever it was.
Speaker 3 48:40
So because of this, you know, even though they were small, a small exchange, so to speak, because of the sudden huge increase in value, suddenly Quadriga was exchanging $1 .2 billion worth of Bitcoin.
Speaker 3 48:51
Oh, okay. So it’s just this guy with a laptop and they really- It’s just one laptop. It’s like one laptop.
Speaker 1 48:59
Something could happen to the left.
Speaker 3 49:00
something could happen to any laptop because we have to him well great
Speaker 1 49:05
I thought it’d never happen.
Speaker 3 49:09
So one of the interesting features of Quadriga, one of the many, was that they liked to make things really easy for you, So you didn’t need them.
Speaker 1 49:21
My password is 6.
Speaker 3 49:26
So typically with digital currency you use an app to withdraw it and then you have to then convert it to US dollars and then that sends it to your bank account or your debit card or whatever. There’s a multiple step process.
Speaker 3 49:43
So he was like, hey, you know how we made it so easy for people to store money with us? Let’s make it super easy for them to get their money out. And so they used what they called a teller window system.
Speaker 3 49:56
Okay. Okay, what’s a teller window? At the bank? So rather than paying people money they wanted to withdraw by electronic transactions, they told them to come to a nondescript building. Like literally money in a suitcase.
Speaker 3 50:13
Like in this part of Quebec called Laval. And then most customers would say when they got there, either nobody was there or there was no cash available. Oh my God. Yeah. So, you know, so then, you know, there was the huge.
Speaker 1 50:31
was just a skim.
Speaker 3 50:32
Well, let’s, I mean, we can talk about whether it was or not.
Speaker 1 50:35
And if you’re telling people to go, first of all, is it Ponzi scheme or not? Because it’s like telling people to go to get your money at any time, but then it’s not there.
Speaker 3 50:45
It sounds very Ponzi -ish, right?
Speaker 2 50:47
does, and it’s very convoluted. There were so many rabbit holes to go down.
Speaker 1 50:53
right but so do you guys go back and forth between like whether this is legit or whether these guys are complete scam artists
Speaker 2 51:00
I think the big question right now is,
Speaker 1 51:06
Whether this should be one or two episodes.
Speaker 2 51:08
No. Is Gerald Cotton somewhere sipping a pina colada with a different face and a different name? That is the question. That’s the real question.
Speaker 1 51:21
Holy shit. Then this should definitely be two episodes because that is a rabbit hole of rabbit holes. Yes. All right. Well, I guess we’ll catch you next week with the shocking, potentially shocking conclusion of this case.
