- One of the founders of AfriCrypt has denied that the platform held billions of dollars in Bitcoin
- Raees Cajee told the Wall Street Journal that they never managed more than $200 million
- He also maintained that AfriCrypt was hacked and $5 million taken
One of the founders of the recently defunct South African Bitcoin investment scheme AfriCrypt, which appears to have exit scammed with bitcoin allegedly worth some $3 billion, has maintained that the platform was hacked. Raees Cajee, 21, told The Wall Street Journal from an undisclosed location that the numbers being reported are wildly inaccurate and that they were only ever managing around $200 million. He also added that the hack only set them back $5 million and that he and his brother, co-founder and COO Ameer are in hiding after receiving death threats.
AfriCrypt Founder Says Numbers Are Wrong
AfriCrypt was a Bitcoin investment platform set up by the Cajee brothers in 2019 when the pair were just teenagers. 2020 saw their customer base surge, but 2021 has been less successful – the journal reports that in mid-April Ameer wrote to clients informing them that their systems had been breached, causing AfriCrypt to halt operations and caution that they would need “a substantial amount of time” to retrieve the stolen funds.
Ameer’s appeal to investors to avoid contacting authorities had the opposite effect and several lawyered up, with one claiming that blockchain records prove AfriCrypt was in possession of Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion at the May peak but now holds nothing. Raees argued that this was not the case, saying that AfriCrypt never held more than $200 million on the platform, $5 million of which was stolen in the hack.
Brothers in Fear of Their Lives
Raees explained that the decision to go into hiding was due to death threats leveled at them since the situation made the news, telling the Wall Street Journal that, “Some particularly very, very dangerous people—that we had not actually known were clients—have started to come out of the cracks.”
Despite not revealing their location to the Wall Street Journal, Raees said that the pair plan to return to South Africa to attend a July 19 court date to begin liquidation proceedings for Africrypt.
