Founders of South African Bitcoin exchange disappear after $3.6 billion 'hack'

[Reatim]

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.

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.

[ven7net]

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:

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 It found that someone had withdrawn Africrypt’s pooled funds from the local accounts and client wallets where the coins were stored originally and put them through tumblers and mixers, making it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.

While this is bad news for the crypto industry, it is nothing unusual about it. Is this the first time this is happening? Not! Well, since such cases have already happened, it means they will continue, it's another matter that there are no tools to solve this problem. Of course, all this is related to anonymity, etc., but the fact of the matter is that if you want to have protection and a guarantee, then you need to choose sites with work experience and proven organizers, and then this also does not 100% grant you the preservation of your funds. Moreover, we are talking about BTC, which means that someone just decided to withdraw these funds for themselves. We are unlikely to find out who did this, but we always need to know and remember that this can happen with any crypto exchange.

[Vishnu.Reang]

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.

[perfect999]

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.

In that specific case that is power as well, not just power of being leader of a nation because both of them have that yet Kim is hated (rightfully) whereas Saudi is "tolerated" (wrongfully) because Sauidis are people who have a ton of oil, give it to high level nations like UK or USA or whoever wants it, then take their money and use it to buy guns from USA to be friends with them, who are they even fighting? They bought tens of billions of dollars worth of military stuff (not just guns, even tanks and war planes etc) and they are not even fighting anyone with those, or at least not requiring those (you can go to Yemen with a bat and still beat them).

So long story short it is not just about money, it is about power, which country you own and what type of deal you can matters a lot. Like NK could start doing trade TODAY and suddenly will be loved a ton, by the governments of course because we all know they are all the same.

[Sithara007]

Gauteng South High Court has passed a liquidation order against the two promoters (Ameer and Raees Cajee). It is confirmed that these two are in the UK right now, and they are being represented by their lawyer John Oosthuizen. Darren Hanekom is representing the opposite side. Meanwhile, Zakira Cajee (cousin of the Cajee brothers, and former director of Africrypt) yesterday issued a statement. She claimed that the entire episode has taken a "huge emotional toll" on the family and they should be left alone now.

[Flexystar]

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)  

Lolz. That changes the whole discussion in the thread. If this is Ponzi then no one can blame the crypto currencies. Since the start we know very crypto is full of Ponzi. If this is the case then those two dudes are not the clever heroes and neither they are being used for the benefit of someone whose far more powerful. Definitely they had the intentions like that since first day.

[Kyraishi]

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 LOL'd at this.

If this doesn't ring alarm bells, I don't know what will.

I can definitely relate to the victims here though. I can imagine that a lot of them simply complied with what was asked of them from the exchange founders. When you're a victim of a scam, oftentimes you find yourself paralyzed and unwilling to do anything over the bare minimum.

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.

Clearly this is an exit scam that has been brewing for a while now and has just begun unwinding itself. No one should be storing funds on a centralized exchange for any purpose other than transactional ones.

[bocyaj]

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:

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.

It was low now. But same was huge happened during the 2017.We don't know the extract thing happened. Because the team member also made involved in this. Again it's just an assumption and probability. The team should be stable in such manner. Because people all over the world earn money by hard work.

[swiftbits]

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.

[jaysabi]

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) 

The title of the thread mirrors the title of the article from Endgadget, I just used their reporting. It's possible it was both an exchange and a ponzi scheme, they're not mutually exclusive, and it would still render the title correct.

[semobo]

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.

[jaysabi]

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.

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.

This is dumb post and definitely not how it works in the least.  Even the theory that this is how it should work is stupid.  Because the one thing that undermines society the most is arbitrary law.  And you can prove it doesn't work this way because it never happens.  If all someone had to do to keep their stolen money was flee to a different country, you would see this constantly and you don't because it's just not a real thing.  No society wants to keep a bunch of thieves and criminals on the streets, that serves literally nobody.

[Silberman]

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.

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.

[7788bitcoin]

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.

How long they will be running and hiding away from the authorities, if they ever try to spend those money and live a luxurious life they will attract attention and get caught. 

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

You can just speculate that they were abducted and killed by the group of hackers, why would the hackers do that as they always work in the background rather than facing you with a gun to rob the money .

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

Both these cases are in different circumstances, Mt.Gox happened when the cryptocurrency market was literally new but now the entire scenario changed.

[Reosta_]

It's sad to hear crypto exchanges experience things like this. Especially small exchanges have big problems on recovering after getting hacked. And the founders of some of them just flee like in this example. Therefore, I don't trust many exchanges to be honest. They may be doing their job really well. But I don't want to increase the risk of losing my money.

I hope that the investors can get their money but I don't see it very possible honestly.

[Sithara007]

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.

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.

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.

[Kittygalore]

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.

AI trading has a potential, algorithms that trades on it's own are already made by HFT companies in stock market so there's a good cover for the scammers to do the technology because there's a proof of existence and proof that it works. You are probably right that this was planned from the start because that's a pretty big coincidence that they disappeared and showed up in UK right after the hack.

[Chato1977]

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 .

[Vishnu.Reang]

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 .

Well.. I learnt this the hard way in 2018, when Wex.nz went down along with my LTC stash. I was storing my coins in the exchange wallet, because I was too lazy to create an online wallet for Litecoin. And the same happened once more in 2019, when Cryptopia closed down. I lost whatever LTC remained after 2018. And it saddens me that a lot of noobs repeat the mistake that I did in 2018 and 2019. Setting up an online wallet doesn't take much time. At the most you need 10-15 minutes. But once done, it will give you peace of mind.

[Natalim]

There's no reason for him to disappear if he did not do anything wrong, the hack might be an inside job. Honestly, I didn't hear anything about this news, maybe it's not big news in crypto as it could have resulted in a market dump since FUDDERS will come and play.

$3.6 billion is huge money, but one would not be able to enjoy that if the authorities are going after him.