Bitcoin Forum

Cryptocurrency investors in South Africa may have lost nearly $3.6 billion in Bitcoin following the disappearance of two brothers associated with one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. According to Bloomberg, a law firm in Cape Town says it can’t locate Ameer and Raees Cajee, the founders of Africrypt. In April, the exchange told its investors it was the victim of a hack and asked them not to report the incident to the authorities on account it would “slow down” the process of recovering their missing money.

Some of those involved in the exchange hired Hanekom Attorneys, the law firm that said it couldn’t find the two brothers, to investigate the incident. It found that someone had withdrawn Africrypt’s pooled funds from the local accounts and client wallets where the coins were stored originally and put them through tumblers and mixers, making it difficult (though not impossible) to trace the money. “Africrypt employees lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack,” the law firm told Bloomberg. The outlet attempted to call both Cajee brothers multiple times only to get their voicemail each time.

Complicating any recovery attempt is that South Africa’s Finance Sector Conduct Authority can’t launch a formal investigation into the incident because cryptocurrency isn’t legally considered a financial product in the country. If no one can recover the money, it will go down as the largest cryptocurrency loss in history, easily overshadowing the approximately $200 million CAD that disappeared when the founder of Canada’s QuadrigaCX exchange died while travelling in India.

These Cajee brothers were just 20 and 17 year old kids. While they may have struck the proverbial goldmine with the exchange, it could wholly be possible that they themselves are a victim of the 5-dollar wrench attack.

3.6 Billion is a lot of money. I have no idea what precautions these people took for their safety but young people are prone to boastfulness. If this "disappearance" continue to remain a disappearance, it could as well be that they were gobbled up by someone far more powerful.

The excuse for not investigating is also pretty weak. It has already been a few days and will be impossible to track if something untoward has happened to them. Watch for those proceeds ending up in some politician or powerful policeman's Swiss bank stash.

It sounds like an insider job. The excuse given by the promoters, that informing the authorities would slow down the recovery of the stolen funds sounds just ridiculous. This was just a delaying tactic, so that these criminals could move the funds to some off shore tax haven. Anyway, now the users can blame themselves. One of the golden rules of investing in cryptocurrency is "not your keys, not your coins". These people did the mistake by keeping their coins in an exchange wallet. Now all they can do is to regret.

Africrypt targeted high-net worth individuals and celebrities, according to reports. As with any other scam, it promised ludicrous returns, at times claiming it could offer 10% daily returns. The company was so adept at targeting its victims that most of its investors treated it like their own secret path to a world of unlimited wealth. It was this target market that Africrypt used to reach out to other wealthy investors in their inner circles. Many clients invested upwards of R1.5 million ($105,000), with some going as high as R20 million ($1.4 million).

Was it really an exchange?
Sounds more like an investing scam:

https://coingeek.com/south-africa-btc-scam-africrypt-makes-off-with-3-8b-asks-victims-not-to-report/

It sounds like an insider job.

LOL.. seriously? A 17-year old was allowed to run a multi-billion business? Is this even legal in South Africa?

They should have hinted that there is something wrong when the exchange themselves instructed the investors to not alert the authorities. On thefts and hacks with such a huge amount as this one, the last thing you want to do is to give enough time for the hackers to hide their tracks and do some preparations to disappear. In this case, those who knew that there is something happening doesn't do anything, and coerced other people to do the same. This has to be an inside job, and someone has to pay for it. $3.6 billion is no joke.

Was it really an exchange?
Sounds more like an investing scam:

https://coingeek.com/south-africa-btc-scam-africrypt-makes-off-with-3-8b-asks-victims-not-to-report/


Here is an archived page:
https://archive.vn/8AoqX

Sounds more like the usual ponzi scheme, probably those 3.6 billions (calculated at max peak price) are more likely sums people though they have in their accounts than actual money invested.

Anyhow, sorry to say it, but the ones investing millions with a company run by a 20 and a 17 year old were looking for a way to lose money.

(Ponzi Scheme) ==> Africrypt boasted returns of 2-11% a month  ::)

A 17-year old was allowed to run a multi-billion business? Is this even legal in South Africa? Here in India it is not legally possible. You need to be at least 18 years old to own a private business. And I am even more surprised with the carelessness from the users. They were keeping billions of USD worth of coins in an exchange which is run by a 17-year old? BTW why these two are missing? That makes me suspicious. What if this is an inside job? BTW, the promoters look much older in this photo. Difficult to believe that one of them is 17 years old.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

No matter what happens, it will still be the same. They still have stolen money from the people and I don't think that someone has stolen from them because it's pretty coincidental that they have disappeared when the money was stolen, this smells strongly of inside job.

Interesting case, I bet no one ever will break this record  :D
Though it is not yet clear who stole the money, I think it is obvious that a number of things here indicate the founders probably took the money themselves, especially the fact that they told customers not to report the incident, and that they disappeared. Why disappear?
I think we'll never hear about them again, that is enough money to change your identity, completely cover all tracks and start a new life.

Why the founder have to disappear if he and his exchange are innocent! such a big hack has occurred and he just disappear into tin air, this is clearly an inside job and the actions of the founder looks very suspicious, and to top it all he instructed the victims not to alert the the authorities, who does that! joke of the century, i can't believe they go with such silly request,  another lesson learned, not your keys not your money saying. :-\
between such a young guy in control of such huge amount of money, he his definitely bound to be tempted, the authority should fish him out ASAP.

It's a question whether where are the brothers right now?

Did they left South Africa, have plastic surgery, change their names, apply for a new password and have plastic surgery and now living in a third world country? hehehe.

Or will the victims hire a private investigators since the police can't do anything, or even a blockchain analysis to track where the coins are?

That's the problem with centralised exchange. Once the founders is tempted to steal the money they have in their platform, they could run away with it and leave no trace. History really repeats itself. I just wish binance wouldn't do same thing with this. Lol.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

From Endgadget:

Having said that, the people whose money make up the $3.6 billion dollars prolly invested more than they can afford to lose,

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

The title is misleading, because this site is not an exchange.. but rather one of those scam investment companies that are using Bitcoin (Crypto currencies) as the investment option. This AfriCrypt fraud has been compared to the Mirror Trading International scam. (Ponzi Scheme) ==> Africrypt boasted returns of 2-11% a month  ::)

Go read more at https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/africrypt-hack-of-nearly-r54bn-dwarfs-mirror-trading/ and also see that Raees and Ameer Cajee – reportedly disappeared to the UK (A country from where they can be extradited to South Africa)  ;)

That's less worrisome. I know it is still the same amount of money and it is still scam so I know most people will feel the same but I really do not. If you believe that someone can give you guaranteed income outside of legally bounded places (banks and so forth) then you are wrong and it is normal that you get scammed, not fair of course but it is still wrong.

There is a saying in my nation that goes "scammers who scam only other scammers are not scammers" or something like that (translation could be bad) and that is why I do not feel that bad about it. There is no legal organization that gives guaranteed income, all the places that you put your money into are the places that will end up not giving you the real returns and will scam you eventually. They are basically a ponzi scheme and that is how it will continue for a long time as well, there is no way around it.

But it's great for those to learn from this things or ponzi scheme so that they won't do that again in future.

snip

Here is an archived page:
https://archive.vn/8AoqX

Sounds more like the usual ponzi scheme, probably those 3.6 billions (calculated at max peak price) are more likely sums people though they have in their accounts than actual money invested.

Anyhow, sorry to say it, but the ones investing millions with a company run by a 20 and a 17 year old were looking for a way to lose money.

It sounds like an insider job. The excuse given by the promoters, that informing the authorities would slow down the recovery of the stolen funds sounds just ridiculous. This was just a delaying tactic, so that these criminals could move the funds to some off shore tax haven. Anyway, now the users can blame themselves. One of the golden rules of investing in cryptocurrency is "not your keys, not your coins". These people did the mistake by keeping their coins in an exchange wallet. Now all they can do is to regret.

Of course it was an inside job. South Africa is a lawless country with rampant crime and government corruption. The scams run nonstop. Their police force and legal system is so utterly worthless, these people could admit they ran with the money and pay some small fine, and keep the rest.

Never, ever, trust an exchange, reason XXXXX.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

Of course it was an inside job. South Africa is a lawless country with rampant crime and government corruption. The scams run nonstop. Their police force and legal system is so utterly worthless, these people could admit they ran with the money and pay some small fine, and keep the rest.

So another fishy situation where billions worth of Bitcoin is lost and the owners are missing and they are claiming it was a hack. How do they think they can get away with billions of dollars and it looks really fishy and we were not hearing about any major hacks for sometime and now this is a major theft/ hack situation and i really feel bad for the traders who held their coins in their exchange wallet.

Because it was probably an inside job as a lot of the users in this forum is speculating. Also, this smells like a big conspiracy because I have read in the other thread about this "exit scam" that a bank was speculated to be also part of this scam.

There is a saying in my nation that goes "scammers who scam only other scammers are not scammers" or something like that

I didn't know about them landing in the UK, wouldn't they be extradited though because I think that UK doesn't have any laws that prevents extradition on a criminal. That convincing that they shouldn't report to the police was a big risk for them that paid off sadly. Hopefully they will answer to their crimes.

Here is the latest news:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57582805

The two brothers have claims that they have received death threats from investors in South Africa. This is classic style of how financial criminals work. If they can claim that their lives are under threat in South Africa, then the British courts will never deport them back to SA. And the British system takes the case favorably, unless some of the British nationals have lost money. Since it is the South Africans who have been scammed, the British government is going to tolerate their presence in UK. In the past, dozens of financial criminals have migrated to the UK from countries such as India, Greece and Russia, to take advantage of the "open doors" policy meted out by the British government.

It's really time for p2p and decentralized exchange to shine seriously, until how many times people gonna get scammed again and again meanwhile if there's a trustless platform for p2p where people could trade to each other without any struggle to trust each other while also making things convenient, it should become a preferred method. These centralized exchange scamming and their owner that could get away with billions of dollar honestly is really tiring to hear. sad thing though people still gonna prefer to use cex despite all these cases.

               The fact that the founders themselves were telling the customers to not inform the authorities about the "hack" that has happened already placed a target sign on them. They had all the time in the world to prepare for such a feat but became impatient and did the scam half-assed. Lol. Now they have to live the rest of their lives in hudung because of this mistake. Even if they had planned things thoroughly, releasing such a statement was just ridiculously dumb. Literally no one would ever say such things if the "hack" that they were using as an excuse were really true. I hope they get caught and rot in jail for scamming people who did a lot of effort to gain capitals for investing in thus industry.

That's kind of a racist or exclusionist of a law if I say so myself, I think that they still should arrest them though because these are financial criminals and that the threats should be investigated because they might be fabricated so the government can't extradite them. This is probably another one of their con, they might go to another place again if UK doesn't do anything about these two criminals.

I believe that is not racist at all. Why? Because British government only cares about money, and money of others, so if you steal money from Greek people and bring it to UK? That is a good thing for UK, if you steal from South Africans and bring it to UK? That is a good thing for UK, if you steal from British and take it somewhere else? That is bad for UK.

So long story short UK do not care if you are a bad person or a good person, they only care about you being fair or not and as long as you are fair that means you are going to be fine. I do not really care if you are African or British, if someone stole 3+ billion dollars worth of money and then came to my nation? I would be thrilled and not look to jail them or send them back, I would make them put that money in one of my nations bank and tell them to live happily ever after, they technically do not own the money itself since it will be in the bank, and they would just slowly spend it and die. That is how nations grow big, you need a lot of people who are super rich.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

From Endgadget:

If the UK doesn't allow them entry, then some other country will offer them residence. There are dozens of small island nations, where these two will be more than welcome. All that matters now is money. If you have money with you, then nothing else really matter. And that is the reason why Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is held in high regard by everyone, while Kim Jong Un is derided as a dictator. In reality, both of them are equally evil. But the difference is that Mohammed bin Salman has hundreds of billions of USD worth of funds at his disposal, while Kim Jong Un doesn't have any such luxury.

The title is misleading, because this site is not an exchange.. but rather one of those scam investment companies that are using Bitcoin (Crypto currencies) as the investment option. This AfriCrypt fraud has been compared to the Mirror Trading International scam. (Ponzi Scheme) ==> Africrypt boasted returns of 2-11% a month  ::)

Go read more at https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/africrypt-hack-of-nearly-r54bn-dwarfs-mirror-trading/ and also see that Raees and Ameer Cajee – reportedly disappeared to the UK (A country from where they can be extradited to South Africa)  ;)

In April, the exchange told its investors it was the victim of a hack and asked them not to report the incident to the authorities on account it would “slow down” the process of recovering their missing money.

I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

So this makes it the largest loss of bitcoin under such circumstances when you consider the contemporary value of the coins lost.  The exchange, Africrypt, told investors they were the victim of a hack and not to alert the authorities, you know, cuz that's super legitimate.  Some law firm attempting to investigate have tracked the stolen coins to tumblers and mixers to try and obscure where the stolen bitcoin was going.  I guess it remains to be determined if they were actually hacked or stole the money themselves, but the two founding brothers can't be found.

From Endgadget:

The title is misleading, because this site is not an exchange.. but rather one of those scam investment companies that are using Bitcoin (Crypto currencies) as the investment option. This AfriCrypt fraud has been compared to the Mirror Trading International scam. (Ponzi Scheme) ==> Africrypt boasted returns of 2-11% a month  ::)

Go read more at https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/africrypt-hack-of-nearly-r54bn-dwarfs-mirror-trading/ and also see that Raees and Ameer Cajee – reportedly disappeared to the UK (A country from where they can be extradited to South Africa)  ;)

I believe that is not racist at all. Why? Because British government only cares about money, and money of others, so if you steal money from Greek people and bring it to UK? That is a good thing for UK, if you steal from South Africans and bring it to UK? That is a good thing for UK, if you steal from British and take it somewhere else? That is bad for UK.

So long story short UK do not care if you are a bad person or a good person, they only care about you being fair or not and as long as you are fair that means you are going to be fine. I do not really care if you are African or British, if someone stole 3+ billion dollars worth of money and then came to my nation? I would be thrilled and not look to jail them or send them back, I would make them put that money in one of my nations bank and tell them to live happily ever after, they technically do not own the money itself since it will be in the bank, and they would just slowly spend it and die. That is how nations grow big, you need a lot of people who are super rich.

There seems to be a lot of confusion related to the Africrypt robbery. The investors claim that coins amounting to $4 billion were stolen, but Raess Cajee (one of the promoters) issued a statement claiming that there has been a hack and they lost only around $5 million worth of assets. The Africrypt users are unable to access their account or withdraw their funds. And the promoters have fled to the United Kingdom. My question is, if the promoters are correct, then why they fled from South Africa? The excuse that they received death threats is not that believable.

with 3 billion dollars ? you can completely change your personality forever and your whole generation will live forever in luxurious life till the end of the world.

or there is another scenario that they were abducted and killed by the groups that associate this hacking .

but one thing is for sure , this case will be forever gone like what Mt.gox case.

Regardless of the amount being lost, what matters is that there is an important amount of money that has disappeared from the exchange and that the owners disappeared and they are excusing themselves saying they received death threats which as you say it does not make sense, if the amount stolen was so low then they could eventually pay their customers back and turn something that is very negative into something positive showing themselves as honest people that care about their customers, but with this attitude they are showing the complete opposite.

The amount of the hacked bitcoin is still in my question, I can't believe there are many users on their platform.
Investing in an AI trading bot seems skeptical to me. I guess it is either planned since the start, or they were hacked.

There are lot of discussion going about the investment schemes in this exchange, so I am not going to involve in that since we can smell something fishy just from their high return plan but we should never forget that not your keys not your coins so just keep the coins in your wallet itself and the exchanges are here for trading and use it for such purpose alone.

ALl exchange has your coins because you don't own your keys.

This is why from the start this has been the concern of old timers here to educate people not to let exchange keeping their funds .

But what? people are hard headed and loves following their stupidity than security .

Latest news here:
https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/investing/africrypt-cajee-brother-denies-stealing-475b-in-bitcoin/news-story/ba8fe269dd7bd18cb5336b99d02424cd

The investors of Africrypt are saying that a total of $3.6 billion are missing. But the brothers are claiming that they were managing only around $200 million worth of funds (I need to find out who these "investors" are, who trusted a 21-year old and a 17-year old with so much money). The promoters claim that among their customers there are some very powerful people - politicians, businessmen and celebrities. Some of these customers have apparently made the death threat, according to the Cajee brothers. The brothers claim that they are "planning" to return to South Africa.

Unfortunately people didn't check who the owners are, it has been said before that people do not look at the owners of the exchanges they use, it is a shame but it is also the reality. I do wonder how this will unfold, 200 million dollars is not a small amount of money, hell even 5 million dollars is not a small amount of money but 3.5 billion dollars is a staggering amount of money and I do wonder what is going to happen.

If they were 100% innocent and had absolutely nothing wrong then why did they ran away to UK? That is the correct question to ask, if they had so much money just stolen and everything else is fine and they can come back and make the business continue without a problem then they should have done that to begin with. The only reason they went to UK is basically to hide their money there and that's it, now they can come back and claim that they are hacked just like everyone else and they are victims as well.

I don't think that these two will ever return to South Africa. The advantage with UK is that it never deports criminals, if they can prove that their life is in danger if deported. In the past, foreign pedophiles and rapists have managed to overturn their deportations, by arguing that they may face physical harm if sent back. And for the financial criminals, it is even easier. London is being regarded as the hub of white collar criminals. The government in UK doesn't care if your funds are stolen from somewhere. As long as you are rich, and is able to spend that money in the UK, you are welcome there.

I doubt that it is about being deported or even physical harm, it is obvious that these people are now rich and UK wants to take a piece of that money. Think about it, wouldn't you want two people with over 3 billion dollars in their pockets to come to your nation, live there, spend there, when they spend their money others in your nation earn money, and they pay taxes as well so basically all around as long as they live there that 3+ billion dollars will slowly go into UK economy.

So I think it is not about white collar crime, it is not about deportation, it is not about keeping someone safe from physical harm, UK doesn't care about any of that, they only care about money that they could make from these two. I still can't believe they managed to steal this much money, it is a shock to me that they were even capable of doing something this large so easily.

I doubt that it is about being deported or even physical harm, it is obvious that these people are now rich and UK wants to take a piece of that money. Think about it, wouldn't you want two people with over 3 billion dollars in their pockets to come to your nation, live there, spend there, when they spend their money others in your nation earn money, and they pay taxes as well so basically all around as long as they live there that 3+ billion dollars will slowly go into UK economy.

So I think it is not about white collar crime, it is not about deportation, it is not about keeping someone safe from physical harm, UK doesn't care about any of that, they only care about money that they could make from these two. I still can't believe they managed to steal this much money, it is a shock to me that they were even capable of doing something this large so easily.

Even if they return to south africa but the words they say is not that strong. If they got a death threat oine then they should prove that it's true and if it's physical death threat then it would be hard to prove. This feels like an exit scam by saying that the exchange got hacked but it is them who did it (just saying though I don't have any proof but it sure do feels like it)

This remains to be a dumb idea even though you keep posting it.  That's not how any of this works.  If it is, go find all the times the UK has refused to deport someone because the UK wanted to keep the money the criminals stole and brought to the UK and post them here.  You won't find any because that's not how it works.  Even among conspiracy theories, this one is stupid.

I don't think that these two will ever return to South Africa. The advantage with UK is that it never deports criminals, if they can prove that their life is in danger if deported. In the past, foreign pedophiles and rapists have managed to overturn their deportations, by arguing that they may face physical harm if sent back. And for the financial criminals, it is even easier. London is being regarded as the hub of white collar criminals. The government in UK doesn't care if your funds are stolen from somewhere. As long as you are rich, and is able to spend that money in the UK, you are welcome there.

Bitcoin exchange hacks and exit scams used to make a negative impact over the market. This time there is no big impact experienced, and this is all because of the exchange being unknown to majority of the users. Right now there is no complaints raised against both of them who have scammed the users. Such situations will affect the reputation of the cryptocurrency network.

Thanks for the info, it does not seem then that this is going to be resolved soon or that at least those people are going to pay by spending time in jail, however I find this argument to be flawed after all if someone does something as bad as stealing so much money from you then it makes sense to be incredibly mad to the point to make threats, I am not justifying violence against those people as they should face the criminal justice system of their country, but I say that being mad and losing control of what you say makes complete sense and for that to be enough to not deport a criminal makes no sense to me.

UK don't want to keep the money. But they are OK, if the money is spent in that jurisdiction. There is nothing wrong in what beerlover posted, because I know that during the last 3 decades dozens of financial criminals have settled down in the UK. And these scammers have migrated to the UK from all around the world, including African countries, China, India, Greece, Russia.etc. Being an Indian, I would say that the UK's policy of protecting criminals like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi (who have stolen billions of $$ worth of funds from the Indian banks) is extremely disappointing.

Well pretty much everything you said was inaccurate.  Modi is currently in the process of being extradited to India, in fact his latest appeal was just rejected by a UK court several days ago (https://www.dnaindia.com/business/report-pnb-scam-uk-court-rejects-nirav-modi-plea-challenging-extradition-to-india-2897061).  So not only is the UK not a "safe haven" for criminals, but the specific example you cited proves to be working exactly the opposite of how you keep saying it does.

An exist scam if you can get away with 3.6 bn USD sounds like a good risk / reward bet to be in. With such kind of money you can just buy a huge yacht and sail into international waters for the rest of your life. What remains curious to me is that an unknown exchange handled such kind of money. I feel bad for all the investors who los their coins, but how can you put such large sums of money in an exchange without a long track record. I agree that is best to withdraw coins instantly from the exchange, leave only the coins on there that you are planning to sell in the next few days. The security risk is just too big.

There are several possible explanations to this situation.
It could be possible that the brothers were themselves victim of some scam and the only available option is to abscond to avoid paying the debt of $3.6 billion. It is a huge sum of money and absconding might seem as the best alternative.
It could also be possible that the two brothers are the scammers who used an exchange to scam people of their hard earned money and after successfully carrying out their scam ran away.
Anyways, I do hope the funds are recovered because this means a lot of people would lose money and it is possible for some to have lost their life savings.

~
Well, it depends if you can get all of it as well. These guys weren't keeping the 3.5 billion dollars in their pockets when they left, everyone is talking about how the scam was for that amount but just because they scammed that much doesn't mean they got away with that much.

These are technological stuff and I would be shocked to hear if they had even over 100 million dollars to their name when they run away, when you want to scam people it is not really as simple as take their money and leave, there are a lot of cold wallets, there is hot wallet, there are wallets for each coin, there are hot wallets for each of them, there are colds for each of them, there are operational ones where people in your staff has access, and as soon as you touch one of the cold wallets you are going to end up with a red flag and someone in your staff may leak that information. So, it is quite quite difficult to steal ALL of it.

These Cajee brothers were just 20 and 17 year old kids. While they may have struck the proverbial goldmine with the exchange, it could wholly be possible that they themselves are a victim of the 5-dollar wrench attack.

The excuse for not investigating is also pretty weak. It has already been a few days and will be impossible to track if something untoward has happened to them. Watch for those proceeds ending up in some politician or powerful policeman's Swiss bank stash.

Never knew this before. risks that cannot be avoided and feared by all crypto traders. loss money because other people certainly unacceptable. and with a nominal of that size, I assume they are already big in their country? honestly i never heard that exchange name before. hope african friend there will get the best solution for their assets.

are they not even clarification or make press conference for that case ?

I never heard of the exchange too but there must be a lot of users from their country for them to profit $3.6B.

When victims are not found more than 24 hours, the chances of them getting found alive is pretty slim. It rarely happens that a victim will show up with just bruises and can go on with their lives after.  But this one has $3.6B, I don't think a criminal will let them go without a truckload of money.