B.C.’s director of civil forfeiture has filed an unexplained wealth order in an attempt to seize a quarter-million dollars in cash, 45 gold bars, luxury watches and jewelry that were contained in a safety deposit box belonging to the co-founder of a notorious B.C.-based cryptocurrency exchange scam.
Documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court say the items are the proceeds of crimes committed by Michael Patryn, who along with Gerald Cotten founded Quadriga Coin Exchange.
Cotten’s mysterious death in India in 2018 hastened the discovery of an estimated $215 million in missing investor funds from Quadriga. In 2019, the company was put into court-ordered bankruptcy.
An investigation by the Ontario
