{"id":19178,"date":"2021-06-26T15:56:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T19:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=19178"},"modified":"2021-06-26T15:56:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T19:56:35","slug":"africrypt-brothers-deny-involvement-in-bitcoin-heist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/06\/26\/africrypt-brothers-deny-involvement-in-bitcoin-heist\/","title":{"rendered":"Africrypt brothers deny involvement in Bitcoin ‘heist’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A lawyer for two brothers who founded a South African Bitcoin investment firm has told the BBC they categorically deny any involvement in a “heist”.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Africrypt, founded by Raees and Ameer Cajee, “absconded” with Bitcoin then valued at about \u00a32.6bn ($3.6bn), according to a complaint to police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A law firm – Hanekom Attorneys – made the complaint in April on behalf of a group of investors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But there is uncertainty over exactly how much crypto-currency is missing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On its now inactive website, Africrypt described itself as “an investment firm exclusively focused on crypto-currency and blockchain technology”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The company, founded in 2019, told investors in only a few years it had grown from a one-man operation running out of a bedroom to “one of Africa’s largest and most successful AI trading companies”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hack claimed<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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On 13 April, chief operating officer Ameer Cajee wrote to Africrypt clients announcing the firm had halted operations because of a hack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Our system, client accounts, client wallets and nodes were all compromised,” he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The letter advised investors not to pursue the “legal route” as that would “only delay the recovery process”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of the investors who lost access to their money are represented by law firm Hanekom Attorneys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The law firm said Bitcoin valued at $3.6bn had been “dissipated in its entirety”, in a complaint sent to an elite South African police unit, known as the Hawks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The investigation into where the bitcoins went had been hampered by the use of “various dark web tumblers and mixers”, the law firm wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That refers to technologies that can make it harder to trace bitcoins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The law firm said its analysis led it to believe that describing this as a hack was “misplaced”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Brothers’ response<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Lawyer John Oosthuizen, who represents Raees and Ameer Cajee, told the BBC the brothers “categorically denied” they had been involved in a “heist” or had absconded with funds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“There is no foundation to the accusation and there’s no merit to those accusations,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“They maintain that it was a hack, and they were fleeced of these assets,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He declined to confirm the $3.6bn value for the Bitcoin lost, and noted media reports suggesting the value was an overestimate.<\/p>\n

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Asked by the BBC if the brothers had contacted the police after the alleged hack, Mr Oosthuizen said: “No.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But he added that they were young men aged 18 and 20 with “very little life experience”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He said the brothers had received death threats and their first reaction was to keep themselves and their families safe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He said his firm was working to prepare a dossier to demonstrate to the authorities that Africrypt had been hacked and the brothers had been the victim of theft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He said Raees and Ameer Cajee would co-operate with any future inquiries by the authorities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But at present they had not been notified of any investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Amount held<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Questions have been raised about amount of Bitcoin Africrypt is said to have held.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An investor who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity argued that while the losses were considerable they were very much less than the billions that had been reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An archive of\u00a0Africrypt’s website from Jan 2021<\/a>\u00a0also suggests it was holding less than $3.6bn in assets: “We manage over $100m across our venture fund and AI-driven trading platform,” it read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Financial inquiries<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) said, in a press release, that crypto-assets are not regulated in South Africa “and consequently the FSCA is not in a position to take any regulatory action”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The press release said Africrypt, “was offering exceptionally high and unrealistic returns”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The BBC has asked South African police if an investigation is under way but they have not yet responded.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lawyer for two brothers who founded a South African Bitcoin investment firm has told the BBC they categorically deny any involvement in a “heist”. Africrypt, founded by Raees and Ameer Cajee, “absconded” with Bitcoin […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[7869,4510,4835,977],"class_list":{"0":"post-19178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-africrypt","10":"tag-bitcoin","11":"tag-cyber-crime","12":"tag-south-africa","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19181,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19178\/revisions\/19181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}