Aiden Pleterski: The 'Crypto King' on Trial Over C$41.5M, With No Lawyer

On Tuesday 6 October 2026, in a courtroom in downtown Toronto, a realtor named Luciano Valerio told a jury how he had handed C$50,000 to a young man he used to know from a car rental business. "I signed a contract on the hood of your Audi," he said. He was not talking to the prosecutor. He was answering the accused, Aiden Pleterski, who was asking the questions himself because he has no lawyer.

Pleterski, 27, from Whitby, Ontario, called himself the "Crypto King" on social media. Between July 2020 and July 2022, prosecutors say, he took money from investors with a promise to trade it in crypto and foreign exchange, guaranteed they would not lose the original sum, and then simply spent it. He is charged with fraud over C$5,000 and laundering the proceeds of crime. He has pleaded not guilty, the allegations have not been proven, and he disputes the findings against him.

The money

The numbers come from Grant Thornton, the accounting firm appointed as his bankruptcy trustee: the court-appointed manager who takes control of a bankrupt person's affairs, traces where the money went and pays back what it can. Its report, filed in 2023, found that Pleterski and his company, AP Private Equity Limited, took in C$41.5 million from investors, about US$30 million. Of that, less than 2 per cent was ever invested: about C$670,000, or 1.6 per cent.

About 38 per cent, nearly C$16 million, went on Pleterski himself, the trustee found: private jet flights, holidays and a collection of supercars. Cars later seized in the bankruptcy included McLarens, BMWs and a Lamborghini. The report said he paid C$45,000 a month to rent a lakefront mansion in Burlington, Ontario, spending more than C$1 million to live there, and put down a C$500,000 deposit on a warehouse in Ajax to keep his cars in.

Durham Regional Police say about 160 investors gave him money. The bankruptcy has returned roughly C$3 million to them. Norman Groot, a lawyer representing some investors, told CBC News the real losses could be close to double the trustee's figure, because C$41.5 million counts only what passed through bank accounts, not cash or crypto.

©CMZ chart. Data: Grant Thornton, via CBC

Pleterski's own account, given to the trustee, was that he lost money when crypto prices fell in late 2021 and then tried to win it back. "I guess you could say greed took over," he said, describing trading positions that were "obviously" too aggressive.

How the pitch worked

There was no complicated technology involved. Crypto, digital currencies such as Bitcoin, was the brand. Foreign exchange, known as forex, is betting on the movement of one currency against another, the way a share trader bets on a stock. Pleterski told investors he was a skilled trader in both. The defining feature, according to the investors who have testified, was the guarantee: if the trades lost money, the principal would come back.

The returns he reported were extraordinary. Valerio was sent a spreadsheet listing weekly gains of about 5 per cent; by April 2022 it showed his C$50,000 had grown to almost C$89,800. He then added C$100,000 from his line of credit. When he asked to withdraw C$5,000, he testified, "things just went silent." He never got any money back.

A guaranteed weekly return, paid from a fund that does not grow, is the classic shape of a Ponzi scheme, in which early investors are paid out of later investors' money until new money stops coming. Prosecutor Scott Patterson told the jury that when investors asked for their money, Pleterski said it was frozen. "It wasn't frozen," Patterson said, "because Mr. Pleterski never invested the money, he'd simply spent it."

The Crown, as prosecutors are called in Canada, also told the jury where Pleterski started. He lived with his parents until June 2020, Patterson said, and his only income until that summer was CERB, the federal pandemic benefit of C$500 a week.

Inside the mansion

On Wednesday 7 October the jury heard from Stewart Wilson, who runs GTA Exotics, a luxury car rental business. Pleterski first came in around 2019 and "started out small," Wilson said, renting an Audi R8, then Lamborghinis and a McLaren. Within two years he owned them.

In November 2021 Wilson visited the Burlington house, about 8,000 square feet on the water, which he valued at about C$8 million. Pleterski told him he had bought it, was paying a C$49,000 monthly mortgage and was trading a fund of C$30 million to C$50 million. Wilson saw Lamborghinis worth about C$600,000 each and a McLaren he put at C$2 million. "I'm literally sitting in his living room doing the math," he told the court. He did not trust crypto, so Pleterski told him the money would go into gold and forex. Wilson signed five contracts between November 2021 and February 2022, for C$890,000 in total. One spreadsheet showed a C$100,000 stake more than doubling to C$241,300 in about three months. In March 2022 he asked for money back, and was strung along for weeks. None came.

©Photo: Aiden Pleterski on Instagram

Braden Martyniuk, who invested C$250,000, testified that at a lunch at a Milestones restaurant in Whitby in March 2022, Pleterski promised to "personally guarantee" the principal and said he had a "$300 million slush fund" to protect clients. Martyniuk said he had been reassured by online articles calling Pleterski the Crypto King, including one on the Forbes website, which he later found were paid promotional pieces rather than news reports. Olesya Chornenka, who invested C$72,300 in 2021, and Neville Thompson, who put in more than C$200,000, also testified.

The kidnapping

Long before any charges, the money had attracted another kind of attention. On 5 December 2022 Pleterski got into a pickup truck in Toronto believing he was meeting a potential investor. A gun was pressed into his ribs. For three days he was driven between locations in southern Ontario and tortured, including waterboarding, cigarette burns and beatings with golf clubs, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court. His landlord received a call demanding a C$3 million ransom. He was released on 8 December and told to find the money.

Five people were charged by July 2023. In October 2025 one of them, Deren Akyeam-Pong, pleaded guilty to nine charges including kidnapping, assault and firearms offences. Two others, Akil Heywood and Alfredo Paladino, have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. In that case Pleterski is the victim.

A jury, and no lawyer

Police arrested Pleterski on 2 May 2024 after Project Swan, a 16-month joint investigation by Durham Regional Police and the Ontario Securities Commission, the provincial stock market regulator. Durham police called it the largest fraud investigation in the region's history. An associate, Colin Murphy of Oshawa, was charged with one count of fraud over C$5,000; the trustee found he received C$1.3 million from the scheme. Murphy has said he is innocent. Fraud over C$5,000 carries a maximum of 14 years in prison.

The trial dates were fixed in June 2025. On 28 September 2026, a week before the start, Pleterski's lawyer for the day, Marco Sciarra, asked Ontario Superior Court Justice Shaun Nakatsuru for more time, saying relatives were ready to sell assets to pay for trial counsel. Neither the relatives nor the assets were named. Patterson argued Pleterski had not been "honest and genuine" in looking for a lawyer, and the judge refused. "You will receive a fair trial," Nakatsuru told him, promising to raise objections on his behalf so the jury hears only admissible evidence.

So far the self-defence has been thin. On the first day Pleterski cross-examined Valerio, the step where the accused questions a prosecution witness, and suggested Valerio knew he was trading unregulated crypto. On the second day he declined to question any of the four investors. Asked if he had questions for Thompson, he told the judge: "I have no questions. I don't know what to ask." The Crown expects to call about 15 witnesses, most of them investors, plus a forensic accountant and a police officer. The trial is scheduled to run four weeks.