⚡️🇿🇦 STORY - They were 17 and 20…

⚡️🇿🇦 STORY - They were 17 and 20 years old, and they promised to make thousands of investors rich.

A few months later, they disappeared with $3.6 billion in Bitcoin.

Here's the fascinating story of the Cajee brothers, South Africa's biggest crypto fraudsters.

➤ The birth of an illusion.

In 2019, when the world was still discovering Bitcoin, two young South African brothers, Raees (20) and Ameer Cajee (17), launched Africrypt.

Their pitch was simple: using secret algorithms and arbitrage trading, they promised up to 10% daily returns.

Despite their youth, the two Cajee brothers were charismatic.
They cultivated their image, dressed as luxury designers, driving their Lamborghini Huracán and traveling the world.

They appeared to be the new prodigies of decentralized finance.

But behind this glittering façade, Africrypt was a house of cards.

There were no audits and no licenses.
Customers invested simply for the lure of a promised gain.

Funds were entirely under the control of the brothers. There was no separation between investors' money and their own bank accounts.

"It was all based on perception and trust," confided an anonymous major investor later, who admits today: "Money was simply moved around at their whim".

➤ The day everything changed.

On April 13, 2021, Africrypt investors received an email stating that the platform had been hacked.

Customer accounts, wallets, servers... everything had been compromised. Africrypt employees had even mysteriously lost access to the platform's backend.

Most importantly, Africrypt asked people not to alert the authorities, as this would ruin any chance of recovering the funds.

A few days later, there was no sign of life: website inaccessible, offices emptied, telephone numbers deactivated.

Raees and Ameer Cajee seemed to have vanished...

➤ A planned escape.

They hastily sold their possessions: the Lamborghini Huracán, a luxurious hotel suite, and a waterfront apartment in Durban.

According to some sources, they first fled to the UK, claiming to fear for their lives.
But before doing so, the brothers obtained new identities and even citizenship of Vanuatu, a tax haven.

The two brothers had meticulously orchestrated their escape, taking 3.6 billion rand (around $240 million) with them.

Blockchain analysts soon realized the deception.
There is no trace of hacking.
The movement of funds is internal. The funds are fragmented into multiple wallets, then sent to crypto mixers and finally sent to offshore platforms.

➤ An investigation in the fog.

The Cajee brothers are said to have taken advantage of the legal vacuum surrounding digital assets in South Africa.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) opened an investigation, but came up against a major obstacle: Cryptocurrency was not regulated in South Africa.
In other words, no clear laws to effectively prosecute Cajee.

"They exploited a legal grey area to perfection" analyst Wiehann Olivier later explained.

But even without immediate indictment, the potential charges were heavy: fraud, theft and money laundering.

For a long time, the Cajee brothers left no trace behind.

Until the Swiss authorities opened an investigation into money laundering.
Investigations revealed that the stolen funds had first transited through Dubai, before being camouflaged by crypto-mixing services and landing in Zurich.

In 2022, Ameer Cajee was arrested in Zurich for alleged money laundering, while attempting to access Trezor wallets containing Bitcoin from Africrypt.

However, in the absence of prosecution, Ameer was released on substantial bail. He stayed briefly in a luxury hotel at $1,000 a night.

Today, the situation remains unclear for many investors who, despite some regulatory changes in South Africa, have never recovered their funds.

As for the Cajee brothers, they never resurfaced publicly after that.

The story of Africrypt is one of magical returns and the image of a quick fortune that can be made with cryptocurrencies...
But it's also, and above all, the story of thousands of investors, most of whom lost their life savings in this scam.

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