Toronto fraud trial: 'Crypto King' Pleterski caught on tape admitting $300M fund never existed
An audio recording played in court reveals Aiden Pleterski admitting his $300M investment fund was fictitious. Crown witnesses wrapped Monday as the money laundering charge was withdrawn.
Audio recording at Toronto trial exposes Pleterski's $300M fund as fiction
An audio recording played before Ontario Superior Court on Monday captures self-described "Crypto King" Aiden Pleterski admitting to investors that his $300-million trading fund "never existed," cbc.ca reports. The 27-year-old is standing trial in Toronto on a fraud charge exceeding $5,000, which he denies.
The roughly three-hour recording, made at a June 2022 meeting, captures a direct exchange between Pleterski and two investors, Brad Rogers and Jason Affleck. When Rogers states "never existed, you said," Pleterski responds: "Mitch showed you the picture and all that based on whatever, then that account basically never existed."
The admission comes despite Pleterski having provided investors with screenshots and videos of an FXChoice trading platform account showing a balance of more than $311 million — material distributed just weeks before that same meeting.
Retired officer among final Crown witnesses
Chris Winn, a retired Durham Regional Police staff sergeant who served nearly 30 years with the service before retiring in 2020, was the fourteenth and final Crown witness. He testified remotely, recounting two meetings with Pleterski held at the Pickering, Ontario home of another investor. Winn invested a combined $450,000 — personally and through a holding company — and recovered $330,000.
"He told us basically he hadn't traded any of the money and basically it's a Ponzi scheme," Winn told the court.
The Crown also withdrew its money laundering charge against Pleterski at the close of its case on Monday.
FXChoice account deleted before discovery
Earlier testimony from investor and former friend Mitchell Learning described how he travelled to Pleterski's lakefront mansion in Burlington, Ontario in June 2022 seeking "proof in person" of the account balance. Accessing Pleterski's computer, Learning found an email from FXChoice confirming Pleterski had deleted the account.
Learning testified that Pleterski subsequently admitted he had lost the money trading the previous year and had since been repaying investors using other investors' funds — the hallmark of a Ponzi structure.
In the June 2022 recording, made approximately one week after Learning's private confrontation with Pleterski, Pleterski himself describes a cycle of losses and reimbursements funded by incoming investor capital: "Since January, I've refunded $700,000, lost it, I've refunded $1 million, lost it, I've refunded $300,000, lost it. That was money that was taken in from investors."
Investors: 'Normal people mortgaged their houses'
Throughout the recorded meeting, investors pressed Pleterski to liquidate assets and place them under investor-supervised control, from which Pleterski would conduct trades to recover the losses. Anger over the impact on third parties surfaces repeatedly.
"This is one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in f--king Ontario," Winn states in the recording. "It'll be front page of the paper."
Affleck described the financial ruin facing people he had personally referred to Pleterski's scheme: "They've mortgaged their houses, they've got lines of credit. You've met these people, they're family, they're friends, they're f--king cleaning ladies. They're normal people that have worked their whole lives to work up to this money and you've taken it."
Winn also raised concerns about current Durham Regional Police officers appearing on Pleterski's investor list. "I got guys that still work at the police department all over this f--king list," he said in the recording.
Pleterski: 'I'm sitting here trying to make it right'
Pleterski, who is representing himself at trial, pushed back against suggestions of deliberate deception at the recorded meeting: "If I had a malicious intent with any of this, I wouldn't be sitting in front of you guys, I'd be on a f--king plane getting out of here right now. I could have been gone long, a long f--king time ago, but I'm sitting here trying to make it right."
He also argued in the recording that he possesses the skills to trade, but stated he was not in the right headspace to do so.
Previous testimony in the trial established that Pleterski spent $16.3 million of investor funds on cars, credit cards, private jets, security and accounting services. One witness, a real estate developer, testified he alone handed Pleterski $4.5 million to invest.
The defence phase of the trial has not yet begun.
Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)