Absconding South African brothers deny involvement in £2.6 billion-history's biggest crypto theft

IN what is being claimed as the biggest Bitcoin exit scam ever amounting to £2.6 billion in crypto currency, two South African brothers, who launched a bitcoin business from their bedroom, have vanished while their lawyers now claim that the brothers are the victim of a “online theft” and gone untraceable to save themselves from the investors’ threats.

Raees and Ameer Cajee, 21 and 17, have been missing since April when their trading platform, Africrypt, was shut down after an alleged cyber attack. Ameer had emailed Africrypt's clients announcing the firm had halted operations because of a hack and advised them not to pursue the "legal route" as that might "only delay the recovery process", a media report said on Friday (25).

Ameer also told  stakeholders that it was "unknown to us the extent of personal client information breached during the attack”.

A week before their disappearance and the alleged attack, the brothers had removed their staff at Africrypt's back-end programmes, Hanekom Attorneys, the law firm representing aggrieved investors, claimed. They also sold off their big assets, including Lamborghini Huracan, a luxury suite at one of South Africa's most expensive hotels and a rented beachside apartment in Durban.

There is uncertainty over exactly how much crypto-currency is missing.

In a complaint sent to an elite South African police unit, the law firm said Bitcoin valued at £2.6bn had been "dissipated in its entirety".

Meanwhile, lawyer John Oosthuizen, who represents Cajee brothers, has claimed in a statement to BBC that the brothers neither were involved in a "heist" nor had absconded with investors’ funds.

Maintaining that there was a hack, Oosthuizen claimed that the £2.6bn valuation for lost Bitcoin is an overestimate and the brothers have gone untraceable to safeguard themselves from the threats they were getting from the investors.