[imagesource:here]

When (or if) Ameer Cajee and Raees Cajee ever face the music, they will have plenty of uncomfortable questions to answer.

Yesterday, we reported that the brothers, who stand accused of disappearing with billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, deny any wrongdoing.

Instead, they claimed, through lawyer John Oosthuizen, that Africrypt, a so-called cryptocurrency investment platform, was hacked, and they are also the victims here.

There have been a few more developments on that front, starting with Oosthuizen bowing out.

MyBroadband reports:

“Our mandate to assist the Cajee Brothers has been terminated,” Oosthuizen, a Johannesburg-based attorney, said in an email, when asked for comment on the brother’s whereabouts.

“I look forward to reading your reporting on the Africrypt saga further.”

Those sound like the words of someone who knows the shit is about to hit the fan.

Raees’ phone was also briefly turned on at some stage on Sunday evening, but has since been turned off, and the whereabouts of the brothers remain unknown, even to family members.

Although the brothers are aged just 18 and 21, Africrypt, which was founded in July 2019, isn’t their first foray into the cryptocurrency platform game.

They started another investment scheme in May 2019, and it’s here that an interesting pattern develops.

According to Moneyweb, that scheme also fell victim to hacking, with the wallet emptied of all Bitcoin.

Those who invested had been asked to sign an agreement that exonerated the company from virtually any kind of loss, including hacks.

This is similar to the agreement with Hong Kong-based RaeCreateWealth Limited that clients of Africrypt were required to sign.

Image: Africrypt

Another ‘client’ of the Cajees told Moneyweb they were prominent members of the Muslim community in Johannesburg and exploited the trust of friends and family.

“We were introduced to the Cajee brothers through friends; we could see, through the lifestyle that they were living, that [they] had money. We never suspected that [they] would steal a few hundred thousand rand. The crypto market was crashing at the time, but Raees was sending me statements every month showing me positive growth.”

The communication Raees sent out after that first ‘hack’ was remarkably similar to the information sent to Africrypt’s clients earlier this year, following the latest ‘hack’.

It’s understood that the day before the Cajee brothers left South Africa, they sold a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, and two properties.

Meanwhile, those who invested have been left high and dry.

London and Dubai are the two most likely current locations, but again, the whereabouts of the Cajees remains a mystery.

Attorney Darren Hanekom, who is investigating the hack, believes that the brothers may have been “acting on behalf of a much bigger international syndicate”, and suspects it “may have been a money-laundering operation”.

As titillating as these tales are to read, at the centre of each one of these scams are regular people who have lost their hard-earned money.

It’s unlikely that they will ever see their investments again.

[sources:mybb&moneyweb]