The CEO of a Toronto-based cryptocurrency firm who was abducted in downtown Toronto on Nov. 6 was freed unharmed after paying a $1 million ransom.
“I want to reassure everyone that I am safe and doing well. The investigation by Toronto Police into this incident is ongoing with my full cooperation,” WonderFi president and CEO Dean Skurka wrote on the social media platform
X and his
LinkedIn page on Nov. 8.
Police received a report of a kidnapping near University Avenue and Richmond Street West just before 6 p.m. on Nov. 6, Toronto Police
Constable Laurie McCann told The Epoch Times. She confirmed that the victim was Skurka, adding that “unknown suspects” forced him into a vehicle and demanded money.
Skurka was found some hours later at Centennial Park, roughly
23 kilometres west of the downtown area where he was abducted. No injuries were reported, McCann said.
CBC News, which first reported the incident, said Skurka was released after a $1 million ransom was paid electronically.
The incident took place a day after WonderFi released its
third-quarter 2024 financial results, reporting $41 million in revenue and interest income for the first nine months of the year, a 153 percent increase over the same period in 2023.
Skurka’s kidnapping was not the first involving a Toronto cryptocurrency executive.
In 2022, Aiden Pleterski was kidnapped at gunpoint in downtown Toronto, beaten, and held captive for three days. At the time, the self-proclaimed “Crypto King” was facing accusations of running a Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors of up to $40 million. Pleterski, 25, was
arrested in May 2024 and charged with fraud over $5,000 and laundering the proceeds of crime. A judge has
dismissed his application for a discharge from his bankruptcy.
Crypto Crimes
Authorities have raised concerns about the rise in crimes within the cryptocurrency industry, where users are targeted by criminals and digital currencies are exploited for illicit activities. While cryptocurrency’s decentralized nature offers a secure way to transfer value in exchange for goods and services, without financial intermediaries to validate and facilitate transactions, criminals can exploit these characteristics to commit theft, fraud, money laundering, and other illicit activity, says the
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a U.S. federal agency operated by the
FBI.
Canada’s financial intelligence agency, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), said in its 2022
–23
annual report released last December that it expects criminals to increasingly use cryptocurrency to “raise, move, and hide funds outside the traditional banking system.”
“FINTRAC has observed an overwhelming reliance on mixing services and high-risk exchanges to launder cryptocurrency and to convert ransoms back into fiat currency. Centralized exchanges are also frequently used to launder and cash-out smaller amounts,” the report said.
The financial watchdog said that laundering the proceeds of fraud and ransomware attacks “continues to be the most prevalent form of money laundering involving virtual currencies.” Moreover, “FINTRAC has observed the increased use of virtual currencies by terrorist groups globally to fund their activities,” its annual report added.
