The cryptocurrency investment company Africrypt in Cape Town, South Africa allegedly stole nearly 70,000 bitcoins. The two brothers Ameer and Raees Cajee, who are the founders of the firm, have disappeared.
The customers of the Africrypt became victims of a major bitcoin scam, in which 69,000 coins mysteriously vanished. With today’s prices, this substantial amount is worth about $2.3 billion.
The first signs of the fraud emerged in mid-April when the dollar value of bitcoin reached its ATH and traded at about $65,000. At the same time, 69,000 coins suddenly disappeared from the platform. However, one of the founders – Ameer Cajee – told the users that the company was a victim of a hack. He went further, asking the customers not to report the incident to authorities or lawyers as it would slow down finding the missing assets. In mid-April, AfriCrypt’s investors were sent an email claiming that the platform was shutting down and freezing all accounts following a hack that compromised client accounts, wallets, and nodes.
Some of the investors, though, were skeptical about Cajee’s hack version and started investigating the case with the help of the law firm Hanekom Attorneys. During the investigation, Hanekom Attorneys found out that the missing amount of BTC was transferred from its South African client wallets to other large bitcoin pools. The operation made them basically untraceable.
At the time of this writing, the location of the two brothers is still unknown, while the website of Africrypt is down.
source : https://www.coindesk.com/founders-of-south-african-crypto-investment-firm-along-with-3-6b-in-bitcoin-are-missing
