However, they had only been able to locate digital assets worth $610,000.<\/p>\n
Dasset customer Marco Blum told the Herald this week that he had bought $40,000 worth of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum through the exchange, which also hosted his digital wallet. <\/p>\n
He had received a payout of $2000 from the liquidators.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was high risk. I wouldn\u2019t have been happy, but I could have accepted it if the currencies had gone down. It stinks,\u201d Blum said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this feels like something\u2019s wrong and the authorities are just walking away. I\u2019m not going to go broke over this, but I\u2019ve never been so angry in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blum said after initial communication, the liquidators had ignored his queries, which he had been making every three months. <\/p>\n
He was also exasperated that the Serious Fraud Office had dropped its investigation into Dasset on September 8.<\/p>\n
Another Dasset customer, Leo D\u2019Ambrosio, who works in the IT industry in Wellington, said he had $20,000 worth of cryptocurrency with the exchange.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo ultimately receive around 5 cents on the dollar, that is a pretty devastating outcome,\u201d he told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the biggest disappointment isn\u2019t just the financial loss. It\u2019s going through this entire process and reaching the end with many of the same questions we had at the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t pretend to know what the investigators found behind the scenes. But as one of the people affected, it\u2019s difficult not to look back and wonder whether more could have been done earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n
False sense of security<\/p>\n
In the weeks and months leading up to Dasset\u2019s liquidation, D\u2019Ambrosio said customers had complained they could not withdraw funds, nor reach management for an explanation. <\/p>\n
Dasset was dropped from the Financial Service Providers Register in July 2023 for failing to respond to customer complaints since May of that year. <\/p>\n
Blum said he had purposefully chosen a local crypto exchange. \u201cI thought: \u2018It\u2019s a New Zealand company. I know where their offices are. If something happens I can talk to them\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in fact, it was a false sense of security.<\/p>\n
Although Dasset had promoted its Financial Service Providers Register membership on its homepage, and the register is hosted by the Government\u2019s Companies Office site, there were no teeth behind the arrangement.<\/p>\n
Cryptocurrency is not a regulated financial product in New Zealand, so the disputes service, the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme, had no legal mechanisms at its disposal to pursue Dasset or resolve customer complaints. <\/p>\n
The body did send a series of emails to Macaskill asking him to urgently respond to complaints about locked accounts, but ultimately the only recourse was to drop the company from the register.<\/p>\n
Blum did visit Dasset\u2019s office but only a junior staffer was on deck. They could not answer his questions. The office was later abandoned altogether.<\/p>\n
Missing CEO holds the key<\/p>\n
In their second report, Ruscoe and Moore said, \u201cThe CEO has not responded to the liquidators since day three of the liquidation and is believed to be overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n
They added, \u201cThe CEO is understood to retain the key knowledge of how the overall exchange worked and also how\/if customer records are stored.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Herald visited Macaskill\u2019s home address \u2013 an apartment in Auckland\u2019s CBD \u2013 the same week as the liquidation, only to be told by the building\u2019s manager he had disappeared three months ago, with rent owing.<\/p>\n
Unexplained withdrawals and trades<\/p>\n
Ruscoe and Moore said that on top of the unexplained withdrawals, they had identified transactions on (unnamed) offshore virtual services that \u201callow derivative trading\u201d. <\/p>\n
Derivatives are a bet on the future value of an asset.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese transactions, which are valued at millions of dollars, appear to be responsible for the large deficit in assets,\u201d the liquidators said.<\/p>\n
In February 2024, the liquidators referred the unexplained withdrawals and suspicious trades to the Financial Markets Authority, which in turn alerted the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). <\/p>\n
The SFO opened an investigation, which it closed last month.<\/p>\n
The SFO said it would not comment on an open investigation.<\/p>\n
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it had managed to reach Macaskill, but said in a statement that it dropped the Dasset case because following investigation, it had determined \u201cthere is insufficient evidence to support charges of serious or complex fraud\u201d. <\/p>\n