Canada’s Bankrupt ‘Crypto King’ Kidnapped, Tortured, Held for $3M Ransom

Canada’s self-proclaimed “Crypto King” Aiden Pleterski was kidnapped, tortured and held for ransom after allegedly fleecing investors out of millions, legal documents filed a claim earlier this month.

Pleterski filed for bankruptcy in August last year, and the 23-year-old is accused of running an investment scheme. Since bankruptcy proceedings began, claims for $25 million in Canadian value have been filed in his case.

Pleterski had told investors that he would pool their money and invest it in cryptocurrency and currency positions. But of the $41.5 million he received, Pleterski reportedly invested only $670,000, less than 2% of the total amount.

Meanwhile, Pleterski reportedly spent close to $16 million on his “personal lifestyle,” which included chartering private jets, going on elaborate vacations and buying exotic vehicles, such as “​​a Ferrari, four Audis, three Lamborghinis, three McLarens, a Land Rover and a BMW.”

In December, the trustee of the bankruptcy case, Rob Stelzer, was notified by the police in Toronto that Pleterski had been kidnapped. Documents filed March 14 included testimony from Pleterski’s father, Dragan Pleterski.

“He was taken,” Pleterski’s father said. “They basically held him for about three days, drove him around different parts of southern Ontario, beat him, tortured him, allowed him to make specific phone calls only to specific people.”

One of the people Pleterski contacted while in captivity was his landlord, Sandeep Gupta. Pleterski asked Gupta for $3 million to pay off his kidnappers, according to court documents.

Pleterski’s father testified that his son was eventually released, on the condition that he quickly find money to pay the kidnappers and refrain from contacting the police.

“He was released with the threat that he had to come up with money quickly, and if he had gone to the police, there would have been a lot more trouble,” Pleterski’s father said.

According to Pleterski’s testimony, trouble first surfaced for the 23-year-old in November 2021, when he claimed to lose all his investments at a time when crypto markets were beginning to reverse from their all-time highs.

As his losses began to mount, he said he took very aggressive positions to try to “get some people their money back.”

“I was really trying to redeem myself […] but obviously when you do that, I guess you could say greed got the better of you,” he testified. “I was trying to make returns that obviously weren’t possible or weren’t necessarily possible at the time, and that just caused more losses.”