Cryptocurrencies have come under scrutiny of financial watchdogs worldwide for legitimate reasons. Unfortunately, digital assets are vulnerable to a variety of fraud schemes from theft to scam crypto exchanges.
Raees and Ameer Cajee set up Africrypt, a bitcoin investment firm, in the South African Republic in 2019. In a couple of years, it has evolved from a tiny company into a highly successful crypto exchange platform in Africa. However, in April 2021, numerous clients of the Cajee brothers found out that 69,000 digital tokens to the amount of almost $4 billion had gone missing. The co-founders of the crypto platform vanished and their whereabouts have been still unknown. The investigation revealed that all investors’ funds had been laundered through "various dark web tumblers and mixers" so that it obscured a further search of the missing money. Africrypt clients suspected something wrong in early April when they received a mailout from the elder brother, chief operating officer 20-year old Ameer. He announced that the firm had fallen prey to a hacker attack. "Our system, client accounts, client wallets and nodes were all compromised," he wrote. Oddly enough, the letter advised investors not to disclose the case to the police as it would "only delay the recovery process". In fact, not all clients followed this instruction and some of them applied to private law firm Hanekom Attorneys and the police. As a result of the investigation, the law firm detected that the investors’ funds had been stolen not by hackers but by the Cajee brothers themselves who escaped as fugitives. Crypto specialist from the law firm found it weird that the CEO warned his clients not to contact the police. In fact, Hanekom Attorneys Africrypt clients lost access to the crypto platform seven days before the alleged hack, the law firm claims.
