A judge has ordered the owners of video game marketplace Steam to freeze the accounts of Ontario’s self-proclaimed ‘Crypto King’ after he transferred over $500,000 CAD ($430,000) worth of assets across video game platforms during his bankruptcy.
On Thursday, Ontario’s Superior Court judge Justice Black approved the order two weeks after Aiden Pleterski was found trading and selling Counter-Strike skins, specifically high-value virtual knives, in March. He spent $382,000 CAD ($280,000) on a third-party skin trading site and $207,000 CAD ($151,000) on various other platforms.
According to CTV News Toronto, the order requires Valve Corporation to share the login details of the ‘Crypto King’s’ Steam account with bankruptcy trust Grant Thornton. Both Valve and Pleterksi have rejected repeated requests from the trust for roughly a year.
Screenshot taken from an earlier iteration of Counter-Strike. Weapon skins can sell for over $1 million.
On May 15, Pleterski was arrested and charged with money laundering and fraud by Ontario police. Pleterski owes investors $40 million CAD ($30 million) he promised he would invest in crypto.
According to the bankruptcy trust, only 18.5% in investor funds has been recovered from Pleterski since bankruptcy proceedings started in 2022. Fraud recovery lawyer Norman Groot said, “It’s quite apparent that full recovery from their losses is not coming through the bankruptcy process.”
Grant Thornton claims Pleterski has adopted a ‘catch me if you can’ approach. The 25-year-old has reportedly failed to hand over a $360,000 CAD ($260,000) luxury watch while financing his international traveling with undisclosed Scene+ points (a spend-and-earn reward program).
Indeed, Pleterski has been streaming himself as he travels across the world, playing with $206,000 CAD ($150,000) worth of Lego and driving McLarens and Lamborghinis. He also frequently gambled while livestreaming and at one point described himself as a professional streamer who’s “unemployed with income.”
At Thursday’s hearing, the trust also requested a two-year extension to his bankruptcy. The judge allowed Pleterki’s lawyer a month to respond to the extension request so long as Pleterski gives up his Binance and Steam logins while reframing from holding a credit card or soliciting investments.
