- There is little evidence to suggest that Gerald Cotten faked his death, according to a podcast
- Exit Scam podcast interviewed a journalist who went to the area where Cotten is supposed to have died
- He found that all records were properly processed, meaning any malpractice must have taken place before the death certificate was issued
A podcast investigating the alleged death of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten has found little evidence to suggest that he faked his death. Suspicions have been rife in the cryptocurrency world that Cotten, known to be a long-time fraudster, faked a death certificate while on his honeymoon in India in late 2018 and absconded with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of customer funds. However, in a recent episode of the Exit Scam podcast dedicated to solving the QuadrigaCX case, a journalist who travelled to India to look into the death reported nothing outwardly amiss in Cotten’s case, although doubts still remain in some quarters.
Cotten allegedly died in Jaipur, India in December 2018 as a result of complications with Crohn’s disease, which he was known to suffer. However, the speed with which the body was returned to his place of burial in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the fact that his death wasn’t reported for a month, has led to some believing that he never actually died.
Cotten Paper Trail All in Order
Exit Scam spoke to Nathan VanderKlippe, a journalist from Canada’s Globe and Mail, who flew out to Jaipur in February 2019 to retrace the steps taken after Cotten’s death. VanderKlippe discovered that a death certificate circulating online shortly after Cotten’s death was announced was the real thing and it had been filled out and processed correctly, although he did admit that it was possible that a fake death certificate could have gotten into the system.
This is one of the allegations made against Cotten, and by extension his widow Jennifer Robertson, and something that has been backed up by experts on the podcast in previous episodes.
VanderKlippe also spoke to police officers, staff at the hotel where the pair were staying, and the doctor who treated Cotten, none of whom said anything suspicious had occurred during the episode. All other paperwork to get Cotten back home and buried was completed without a hitch.
Doubts Still Remain
Despite this being a seemingly open and shut case, VanderKlippe did admit that it was remarkably easy to access the supposedly private information about Cotten’s death and added that no checks were done on the body between a police sign off in India and the actual burial in Canada.
This raises suspicions that the body in the coffin was not Cotten’s, which was the rationale behind an attempt in 2019 to get the body exhumed – a request that was denied.
This theory of the body in the coffin not being Cotten’s, or being full of rocks, was supported by a self-professed disappearance expert on the podcast, who said that in 90% of cases he had investigated this was the outcome.
The Truth is Out There
What we can say for sure then is that if a scam was perpetrated it was done at the hospital where Cotten passed away and that a fake death certificate was inputted into the system. This is far from impossible, especially in India, but unless someone involved comes forward to confess, or an exhumation is granted, the assumption has to be that Cotten did indeed pass away after spending and gambling away the hundreds of millions of QuadrigaCX users’ money.
