In Whitby, Ontario, police are briefing the media following charges against the self-proclaimed Crypto King for fraud.
Police near Toronto are going to talk about a big investigation they've been doing for a long time. They say they've found a guy who claimed he was great with cryptocurrency but tricked people out of money.
This guy, Aiden Pleterski, is 25 years old. The police say he's been charged with doing fraud (tricking people out of money) and also with moving around the money he got from doing the fraud. Another person, Colin Murphy, who knows Pleterski, got the same charges.
The police are going to tell more about this at a news conference in Whitby, Ont., at 12 p.m. ET on Thursday. You can watch it live on the internet.
Pleterski was let out of jail on Tuesday. His parents paid $100,000 to make sure he followed the rules while he was out. Some of those rules are giving up his passport, not talking to the people he tricked, not posting money stuff on social media, and not buying or selling cryptocurrency.
The police started this big investigation, called Project Swan, after getting many complaints about Pleterski in July 2022.
People have heard about Pleterski since 2022 when some people lost a lot of money to him, and he had to say he couldn't pay them back. People have been trying to find the $40 million he took from them. A court in Toronto has gotten back about $3 million for some of the people.
An expert who looks at money stuff said Pleterski only used 2% of the money people gave him to invest. He spent about $16 million on himself. He did things like renting private jets, going on fancy vacations, buying luxury cars, and renting a big house by the lake.
Last year, Pleterski was still traveling to places like the U.K., Miami, and Australia.
His arrest is just one more thing in a long investigation that CBC Toronto has been doing. They've also talked about how one of the people who lost money to Pleterski got arrested for taking him away in December 2022. And a famous basketball player is suing because he paid $8.4 million for the house by the lake where Pleterski used to live.
