Sacha Singh, a Toronto real estate developer, testified in court that he invested over $4.5 million with Aiden Pleterski, the self-proclaimed "Crypto King." Singh, who met Pleterski in spring 2021, described him as a "sharp kid" and believed he could be a successful entrepreneur in the crypto space. Between April 2021 and January 2022, Singh signed 22 investment contracts with Pleterski, with amounts ranging from $10,000 to $1.3 million.
Singh kept a spreadsheet of the weekly gains Pleterski claimed to have made from trading foreign exchange and cryptocurrency. By March 2022, Singh's calculations showed his investment had grown to over $26 million. However, he never received those returns nor most of his original investment. Singh did receive $700,000 back when he asked to withdraw a million dollars in November 2021, but he later suspected that the money came from other investors rather than actual trading profits.
Pleterski is representing himself at his fraud and money laundering trial in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The Crown alleges that Pleterski guaranteed the money his investors gave him for trading but never actually invested the funds. Instead, the Crown argues that Pleterski spent the money on himself, including on exotic cars, private jet flights, and lavish shopping. So far, the other 10 investors who have testified provided Pleterski with roughly $2.3 million, and most have said they never got any of their money back.
Singh recorded several phone calls with Pleterski in April 2022, during which Pleterski admitted to using his own money to pay returns because the trading platform FXChoice wasn't paying him out. Pleterski also blamed FXChoice for issues paying investors and claimed he was selling assets to pay them back. The jury heard recordings and testimony from other investors, including Mitchell Learning, who testified that Pleterski admitted to running a Ponzi scheme after losing the remainder of the money.