Raees Cajee, co-founder and CEO of South African cryptocurrency investment platform, AfriCrypt, has denied claims that he and his 18-year-old brother, Ameer, disappeared with billions in investor funds, saying less than $5 million is missing.
Last week, MDB reported that AfriCrypt, a cryptocurrency investment company that offers daily returns of up to 10%, vanished with 69,000 BTC of investors funds.
Considering the current price of Bitcoin as of the time of writing this report, this puts the dollar value of the allegedly stolen Bitcoin at $3.6 billion.
Read Also: Two South African Brothers Vanish With $3.6 Billion Worth Of Bitcoin
Raees Cajee, 21, and Ameer founded Africrypt in 2019, setting it up as a fund that invested in bitcoin and other crypto-tokens.
However in April, AfriCrypt notified its investors of the hack and suspicions were immediately raised when a message from the COO urging investors to avoid taking legal action as it would slow down the recovery of the funds.
After this, the brothers halted AfriCrypt’s operations and went missing as attempts to reach the brothers all came back without a positive result.
However, the company’s CEO, Raees Cajee, speaking with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), countered the accusations laid against AfriCrypt.
He stated that he and his brother went into hiding after receiving death threats from some “very, very dangerous people.”
In an interview on Monday from a location he wouldn’t disclose, said the firm’s portfolio was never remotely that big, stressing; “At the height of the market, we were managing just over $200 million”.
Raees also rejected claims that $3.6 billion in funds is missing, stating that the firm only managed $200 million during its peak in April and that only $5 million in investor funds are unaccounted for after the hack.
Earlier, Hanekom Attorneys, one of the law firms representing AfriCrypt’s customers stated that the brothers transferred $3.6 billion worth of BTC from AfriCrypt’s accounts and client wallets through “various dark web tumblers and mixers” to make the funds untraceable.
Also, lawyer John Oosthuizen, who is representing the Cajee brothers, told the BBC that the pair has denied the allegations they stole their investors’ funds.
He stated, “They maintain that it was a hack and they were fleeced of these assets”.
According to WSJ, the brothers plan to surface for a July 19 court hearing regarding their claims.
This is not the first of such incidents in South Africa. A South African Bitcoin trader, Mirror Trading International, collapsed in 2020.
In what was described as the biggest crypto scam of that year, it recorded a loss of about 23,000 digital coins worth $1.2 billion, according to a report by Chainalysis. However, Africrypt investors stand to lose three times as much now.
The latest incident is believed to have potentials that can spur regulators’ efforts to impose stringent orders on the market amid rising cases of fraud.
