CEO Declared Bankrupt after $16million Crypto Scam
Ever heard the famous phrase in the Spiderman movie, “With great power comes great responsibility”? We can say that it applies to a lot of things nowadays. Advance Technology, heralded as one of the most powerful tools in the modern-day world can be related as the great power and responsibility would be to use it for the greater good. Unfortunately, there are still some people who wind up taking advantage of this power in a bad way. One popular technology these days is Blockchain and crypto software’s. One such person named Willie Breedt who was the CEO of VaultAge Solutions misused his power and would up getting the short end of the stick.
This story started in 2018, when Willie Breedt, a South African national opened up VaultAge Solutions with the goal of providing clients with weekly returns on customer deposits through Crypto Mining and Trading. While accepting a minimum deposit of $50 and a maximum of quite a lot, investors saw this as a grand opportunity and invested thousands expecting a bigger return. Up till now, the investors have only received 1% of the expected gains. The total amount that Willie Breedt is accused of stealing from 2,000 investors is a whopping $16.3 million. While this plan of his might have worked differently in his mind, as it turns out, the investors were very unhappy with the outcome and decided to take matters into their own hands. Debt collectors and court cases were formed against the CEO and it wasn’t long before reports started coming in of Willie Breedt fleeing the country. Sources thought that he had gone to Mozambique but this turned out to be false. The CEO himself opened a case of intimidation with the local police just two weeks before at which we can assume were signs from Investors of trying to get their money back one way or the other. According to News24, one of the major investors Simon Dix, who had given VaultAge solutions $440,000 of his own money filed a sequestration order on July 3rd which was effectively carried out. For those that do not know, a sequestration order means taking away of one’s assets, hence the bankruptcy.
Willie Breedt was tracked down by a group of hired Debt collectors in a guest house in Pretoria which he had booked using a fake name. After the court order had been passed, enforcers in South Africa named “The Hawks” raided the guest house seizing a Laptop and a ledger nano wallet which can be the source of the missing funds. However, according to the report, the CEO has not been arrested yet. All VaultAge Solutions agents who were reportedly involved with the transactions are being investigated in hopes of getting a clearer picture of the whole scenario. As for Willie Breedt’s bank account, it had been emptied earlier in the month containing with a withdrawal of $3.15 million.
