EY, Quadriga Law Firm Warn of 'Imitation' Site

UPDATE (Feb. 10, 2021, 18:35 UTC): As of Wednesday morning, the website appears to have been taken down. EY has not yet shared details about how the domain was seemingly hijacked.

A website imitating the defunct cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX has been posted online as of Tuesday, hoping to lure unsuspecting victims.

A warning notification was sent out on Tuesday from both the exchange's law firm Miller Thomson, which represents the now-former users of Quadriga, and Ernst and Young (EY), a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee for the exchange. The website can be accessed at the same URL that the actual exchange used during its operations and which in 2019 and 2020 directed visitors to visit a portal on EY.

"The Trustee has advised that a new website has been posted to www.quadrigacx.com which is an imitation of the original website/portal of Quadriga," said the law firm in its post.

It went on to say the imitation site is not authorized by EY and is not associated with the "Big Four" accounting firm. Miller Thomson said affected users should not attempt to access the site or provide any personal information, including previous Quadriga passwords or identification documents.

Similarly, EY is circulating a notice to affected users warning them of the fake website.

"The Trustee [EY] believes the imitation website has been posted using backups of the Quadriga webpage publicly available on the internet," said EY. "The imitation website may be being used by a person or entity to obtain personal and confidential information of affected users."

A spokesperson for EY referred CoinDesk to its public Quadriga portal, adding, "we’re not able to comment further outside of our public documentation."

An attorney with Miller Thomson likewise noted that the firm had published a warning on its portal.

Neither company said who might be responsible for the site. A WHOIS search on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) show that the domain's current owner has hidden the contact information.

See also: Trustee of Collapsed Exchange Moves to Resolve Crypto vs. Fiat Creditor Claims Tussle

Quadriga was previously Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange before it went offline in January 2019 following banking issues, stalled customer withdrawals and the reported death of CEO Gerald Cotten in December 2018.

EY has been tasked with recovering Quadriga's funds by the Canadian court system, which it's been working on since 2019. As of January 2021, it had recovered somewhere between $224 million CAD ($176 million U.S. as of press time) and $291 million CAD ($229 million U.S.), depending on how a court decides to value the cryptocurrencies recovered to date.

Nikhilesh De contributed reporting.