TL;DR Breakdown:
- Wonderland`s CFO, has been identified as former convicted criminal Michael Patryn.
- Patryn is expected to step down from his position at Wonderland.
- After the announcement, Wonderland’s native cryptocurrency dropped 16 percent.
The chief financial officer of Wonderland, and goes by the name OxSifu on Twitter, has been identified as Michael Patryn. Michael is an ex-convict and co-founder of bankrupt Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.
On Thursday, Zach posted a Twitter conversation with Daniele Sestagalli. Patryn is credited as the creator of Wonderland, co-founded by Daniele. The tweet revealed that they’d discovered OxSifu to be Patryn.
Patryn, a man of many faces
Michael Patryn has adopted many personas during his long career as a criminal mastermind. His long criminal history dates back to the advent of Bitcoin. He was convicted of operating an online identity theft ring in the United States.
He changed his name twice in Canada. In March 2003, he went from Omar Dhanani to Omar Patryn. Later, he assumed Michael Patryn in 2008. In the United States, he was indicted for various felonies, including conspiracy to commit credit card and banking fraud. He is said to have run a website called shadowcrew.com.
He allegedly sold 1.5 million stolen credit and bank card numbers through his website in 2005. He pleaded guilty in 2007 to several other felonies, including burglary, grand larceny, and computer fraud. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and later deported to Canada.
He took another identity after moving to Canada and blended into the crypto industry. He co-founded Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX with Gerald Cotten in 2013. Michael left the company between 2016 and 2017 because he disagreed with the plans to go public. The company went bankrupt in 2019. Investors lost $169 million.
In 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission declared QuadrigaCX a “Ponzi scheme.” The Bitcoin ATM Calgary-based crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, previously the largest in Canada, suffered a significant financial crisis after Cotten’s suspicious death revealed a $215 million hole. Following his demise, it was discovered that he had faked approximately $115 million worth of trading volume on the platform.
The Wonderland world
Later, Patryn re-emerged as OxSifu, Wonderland’s CFO. Now, he will withdraw from Wonderland, pending a voting decision on whether he should be reinstated as the treasury manager. Wonderland runs on the Avalanche blockchain network.
TIME, the network’s native currency, is a cryptocurrency based on a basket of crypto assets such as MIM. Over the past 24 hours, TIME has been down 16%, valued at $409. The suspicions of impending fraud for its association with Patryn have damaged Wonderland and caused a social outrage.
