Ontario's 'Crypto King' arrested, charged with fraud

Ontario's self-proclaimed Crypto King has been arrested and charged with fraud.

Aiden Pleterski, 25, was charged with fraud over $5,000 and laundering the proceeds of crime on May 2, according to the Oshawa court house.

For more than a year and a half now, Pleterski's investors have been trying to track down more than $40 million they gave him to invest in cryptocurrency and foreign exchange. A Toronto-based bankruptcy proceeding that's being heard in Ontario Superior Court has recovered about $3 million for roughly 160 investors.

Bankruptcy proceedings are administered by a licensed insolvency trustee, a federally regulated professional, responsible for investigating the finances of a person or business that has gone bankrupt and administering their estate.

In this case, the trustee is from Grant Thornton, an accounting firm. The trustee's investigation found that Pleterski only invested about two per cent of investor funds while spending nearly $16 million on himself — renting private jets, going on vacations, adding luxury cars to his collection and leasing to a lakefront mansion prior to his bankruptcy.

CBC Toronto has reported extensively on Pleterski since he was taken into bankruptcy in the summer of 2022. Last fall, Pleterski was still jet-setting to U.K., Miami and Australia.

More to come.