B.C.’s director of civil forfeiture has filed an unexplained wealth order in an try to seize a quarter-million {dollars} in money, 45 gold bars, luxurious watches and jewellery that have been contained in a security deposit field belonging to the co-founder of a infamous B.C.-based cryptocurrency trade rip-off.
Paperwork filed in B.C. Supreme Courtroom say the gadgets are the proceeds of crimes dedicated by Michael Patryn, who together with Gerald Cotten based Quadriga Coin Alternate.
Cotten’s mysterious loss of life in India in 2018 hastened the invention of an estimated $215 million in lacking investor funds from Quadriga. In 2019, the corporate was put into court-ordered chapter.
An investigation by the Ontario Securities Fee later decided Quadriga was a fraud and Ponzi scheme.
Patryn, who additionally goes by Michael Dhanani, Omar Dhanani and Omar Patryn, was final identified to be in Thailand, in keeping with the declare.
B.C. Solicitor Normal Mike Farnworth mentioned that is the third unexplained wealth order filed in B.C. since modifications have been made to the Civil Forfeiture Act final 12 months to permit their use.
Unexplained wealth orders require folks to elucidate how they acquired their wealth and property if there’s suspicion of prison exercise.
“By this motion, we are demonstrating once more that criminals must show that their property are the proceeds of lawful exercise and never monetary crime,” Farnworth mentioned in an announcement.
In response to the declare, the RCMP executed a search warrant on Patryn’s security deposit field at a downtown Vancouver financial institution in June 2021, seizing:
- $250,200 in Canadian foreign money “separated into 5 bundles which have been certain with elastic bands, every containing roughly $50,000.”
- Three one-kilogram gold bars, 12 one-ounce gold bars, 10 small gold bars from Australia and 20 gold bars of unlisted dimension from the Canadian Mint.
- Two Rolex DateJusts, one with diamonds; a Chanel J12 Black Diamond and a Baume & Mercier Males’s Clasima Govt.
- Three rings, two cufflinks, one pendant, one necklace.
In response to the declare, beginning certificates, title change certificates, bank cards and cheques in Patryn’s numerous names have been additionally within the security deposit field, alongside with a Ruger 1911 .45 calibre pistol and ammunition.
Civil forfeiture has existed in B.C. since 2006, permitting the province to confiscate folks’s property with none prison fees connected.
It is estimated Quadriga duped over 76,000 shoppers. Ernst & Younger, Quadriga’s chapter trustee, was solely in a position to get well $46 million of the $215 million owed to traders.
