South African brothers disappear with $3.6 billion Bitcoin

Two brothers in South Africa have reportedly disappeared with $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin belonging to their investors, Bloomberg reports.

Ameer and Raees Cajee had told investors in April 2021 their company, Africrypt, was the victim of a hack.

The company's employees reportedly lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack.

Ameer, Chief Operating Officer, told clients not to report the hack to the authorities or take legal action so as not to slow down recovery efforts.

The unusual request rang alarm bells and was ignored by some who contacted a law firm or started liquidation proceedings against the company, according to the Bloomberg report.

Africrypt's website is now down, and the status of the brothers, alongside 69,000 coins, is unknown to authorities.

An investigation showed that the company's pooled funds were transferred from its South African accounts and client wallets, and are now essentially untraceable.

The incident is being touted as the biggest-ever dollar loss in a cryptocurrency scam.

The cryptocurrency market is largely unregulated, a situation that has made a lot of governments anxious, and led to recent crackdowns.

Nigeria earlier this year directed all financial institutions to close accounts of people using their systems for cryptocurrency trading.

The country's regulatory bodies have insisted the ban is in order because of how criminals have been able to easily use the market to launder proceeds of crime.

China has also recently escalated its crackdown on cryptocurrency trading claiming to be fighting the potential for fraud, money laundering, and trading losses by investors.