According to court documents, he invested just 1.6% of that amount while spending millions of dollars on luxury cars, private jets and lakeside mansions.
Pletski was still in high school when he started getting involved with cryptocurrency, using it to buy video games like Call of Duty.
At the same time, he said in an interview on the bankruptcy case that he began to notice people “posting about luxury cars, posting about luxury lifestyles” on social media.
Mr. Pletsky investigated this and found that many people said they made money investing in cryptocurrencies.
“That sparked my interest,” he said.
By 2020, Mr. Pletsky began investing, first raising thousands of dollars from family members and then some from his job as a baseball umpire.
By December of that year, he had moved into his own rental, paying $9,000 a month in fees, which included trading income and money from the government’s emergency welfare payments for people suffering financial losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Thousands of dollars.”
A few months later, he moved again into a multimillion-dollar, five-bedroom mansion in Burlington, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Toronto.
That same year, his parents wanted to invest and gave him $50,000, according to court documents. As well as luxury gifts, Mr Pletsky said he had provided his parents with a return on their investment – giving his father a McLaren 60LT and a BMW M8, and his mother a Louis Vuitton bag and a Burberry jacket, and a 2017 Bentley Bentayga Anniversary for the couple’s wedding.
Dragan and Kathy Pleterski told attorneys at Grant Thornton, an accounting firm and bankruptcy-appointed trustee, that they believed their son was “running a successful investment business.” ”.
All the while, he has been cultivating the social media presence that first sparked his interest in investing. Mr. Pletsky posted photos of himself on private jets, vacationing in Miami and the Bahamas and with a driveway full of luxury cars.
“Where will life take me next?” he wrote in one headline.
But by April 2022, cracks began to appear in Pletski’s luxurious life.
Lawsuits began piling up from investors accusing him of misappropriating their funds.
From there, it was a slow trickle. In July, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered a freeze on Mr. Pletski’s assets. In August, a court ordered him and his company bankrupt.
Then, in December, the alleged kidnapping occurred.
Last summer, Toronto police arrested five suspects, including a man who had invested with Pletski, on kidnapping for ransom and other charges, court documents show.
The new owner of Pletski’s Burlington mansion also faces threats.
Canadian NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his partner Hailey Summers fled the property after a man showed up and demanded to know the whereabouts of Mr Pletski.
After the couple reported the incident, police said they had previously received reports of someone trying to break into the property.
“Ms. Summers and Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander were so devastated by the news that they moved out of their newly purchased dream home and never returned,” their attorneys said in court documents. The couple later won Litigation, invalidating the purchase of the house.
On Thursday, Mr. Pletski appeared to address the incident publicly for the first time, posting a simple Instagram story thanking fans for their support.
“So many of you are supportive and you are awesome,” he wrote.
