After the wife of John Bigatton, a well-known Australian promoter of the now-defunct BitConnect Coin (BCC) project and an alleged Ponzi scheme, reportedly died by suicide, multiple theories have arisen as to whether this was necessarily true because her body was never found.
Indeed, the current theories floating among the family, as well as BitConnect victims, suggest that Madeline Bigatton, who vanished off the cliffs of Australia, could’ve been murdered by her husband or even that the couple might’ve faked Madeline’s death, according to a CoinDesk podcast ‘Crypto Crooks‘ streamed on January 17.
What went on with BitConnect?
As a reminder, the BitConnect Coin was among the world’s top 20 most successful cryptocurrencies, often mentioned in the same breath as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) and John Bigatton was one of its major promoters.
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However, as authorities started asking questions and traders lost confidence, the price of BCC toppled and BitConnect’s creators jumped ship, leaving investors high and dry with billions of dollars in cumulative losses, while its promoters faced enormous victims’ backlash and legal action.
In May 2021, Finbold reported on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charging five individuals for promoting BitConnect, alleging they offered and sold unregistered securities as required by the federal securities laws.
Later in 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California announced they were selling $56 million worth of cryptocurrency seized from BitConnect as part of compensating victims of the fraud scheme.
Despite being indicted in February 2022, BitConnect’s originators have been on the run ever since. In August 2022, Indian authorities stated they were looking for the BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani and six other people over defrauding an individual of 220 Bitcoin worth almost $4.7 million at the time.
No body, no suicide?
Meanwhile, on March 25, 2018, John Biggaton’s wife Madeline went missing after leaving the family’s mansion in the Carss Park suburb south of Sydney, getting into her car with a beach bag, and dropping off the younger of the couple’s two daughters at a friend’s place.
Although acquaintances have said that John believed Madeline had jumped off the cliffs, her body was never found, even though the crashing waves at that spot seem likely to have returned it to shore. This, in combination with John’s odd behavior, gave fire to the theories that Madeline was either murdered or still alive somewhere.
Indeed, when Madeline’s uncle asked John what happened, he was rude and dismissive. On top of that, one week after her disappearance, Bigatton also held a large family party for Easter Sunday, smiling for the pictures posted on Facebook.
According to some speculations, Madeline was considering leaving John or threatening to go to the authorities over the scheme so the theory was that he killed her and made it look like a suicide.
Alive and well-off?
Another unconfirmed theory, supported by some of BitConnect victims was that the pair faked her suicide together, and that Madeline was alive and well, protecting from the authorities the millions that her husband, familiar with various methods of moving money around, reaped from the scam’s victims and hid offshore.
As for John, he was indicted in November 2022 on six charges of investment fraud by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), facing nearly fifty years in prison. As per a recent update from ASIC, the trial is set to begin in July 2023, at which time more information might surface about Madeline’s disappearance.
Elsewhere, mysterious deaths continue to shake the crypto sphere, including those of four crypto billionaires who died under suspicious circumstances over less than a month, including MakerDAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian, alleged crypto fraudster Javier Biosca, Amber Group co-founder Tiantian Kullander, and Libertex head Vyacheslav Taran.
