VANCOUVER — Harry Chun Tak Yeh, a Hong Kong-born Canadian who grew to become an early Bitcoin investor and later based Quantum Fintech Group, was discovered lifeless at about 4:30 a.m. on August 7, his physique on the foot of the tower, bare and lined by a black plastic bag, in accordance to Paraguayan reporting citing police interviews.
What investigators discovered upstairs was equally suggestive.
Police and forensic investigators entered a Thirtieth-floor house utilized by Yeh and discovered doorways open and the inside in appreciable dysfunction. Police Director Francisco Ávalos reported that objects had been strewn throughout the ground and some electrical cables appeared to have been ripped out. The top of the murder unit, Abel Cantero, stated proof gathered from each models was turned over to the Public Prosecutor’s Workplace.
Yeh held models on each the Thirtieth and twenty seventh flooring, in accordance to Ávalos. Police described the higher ground primarily as a piece house containing quite a few high-end laptop programs, whereas Yeh apparently lived on the twenty seventh ground together with his Brazilian associate.
In accordance to experiences from Paraguay, a police investigator stated the constructing’s intensive bodily safety and video surveillance made it troublesome, in his evaluation, for an unknown individual to have entered with out being detected.
A Canadian Chinese language-language report printed Thursday, citing prosecutor María del Carmen Palazón, stated preliminary proof was leaning towards suicide however that investigators wouldn’t make a last willpower till post-mortem and different forensic outcomes had been full. The report stated forensic specialists had taken bodily-fluid samples to check for substances that might have affected Yeh’s habits, and had documented handprints and obvious contact marks round an open glass window close to the Thirtieth-floor workplace.
However The Bureau’s evaluate of British Columbia Supreme Court docket data discovered one other important dimension to Yeh’s historical past: years earlier than his worldwide crypto ventures expanded, he had been a considerable buyer and one of many bigger recognized claimants in one in every of Canada’s extra infamous cryptocurrency trade collapses.
In December 2019, Yeh sued Vancouver’s Einstein Change and associated firms, alleging fraud, solid or falsified wire-transfer confirmations and the failure to return greater than US$4.3 million in cryptocurrency.
The lawsuit alleged that Yeh used Einstein not merely as a private cryptocurrency account, however to course of transfers for himself and his shoppers. Starting in 2017, in accordance to the declare, he usually moved Bitcoin and different cryptocurrency by the trade and used affiliated firms to facilitate wire funds to shoppers and collectors.
The declare additionally alleged that Einstein firms offered false or solid confirmations for a number of wire transfers. Yeh stated the episode broken his fame and shopper relationships and pressured him to cowl obligations arising from transactions performed by Einstein.
Yeh in the end obtained a judgment by default towards Einstein Capital Companions after the corporate failed to reply to his lawsuit, with damages and prices left to be assessed. However the subsequent court docket file reviewed by The Bureau exhibits no damages award or restoration, suggesting Yeh was by no means in a position to accumulate the hundreds of thousands he sought.
Einstein’s principal later admitted in March 2026 that he was liable for the Einstein firms’ fraud and agreed to pay the British Columbia Securities Fee $1 million, the utmost quantity obtainable for that misconduct. Individually, in 2019, the fee notified the RCMP of potential money-laundering considerations raised by a former Einstein worker. By the point Yeh filed his lawsuit, the businesses had been already in receivership; an interim receiver discovered lower than $45,000 in money and cryptocurrency towards buyer liabilities exceeding US$18 million, and the businesses had been dissolved in 2020 with no belongings remaining.
Paraguayan police stated Yeh had entered the nation as a vacationer utilizing a Canadian passport, whereas Canadian Chinese language-language reporting printed Thursday famous that Yeh had additionally displayed a Canadian passport in his personal social-media postings.
A remarkably detailed 2010 profile, initially reported by the Vancouver version of World Journal and republished by China Information Service, the state-run information company working inside China’s united entrance system, described Yeh as a Hong Kong-born Canadian Chinese language immigrant entrepreneur. It reported that his household had moved from Hong Kong to Canada and that his dad and mom constructed an import-export enterprise, bringing merchandise from Hong Kong into Canada.
Caixin, a Beijing publication backed by state-linked Chinese language capital, reported from Hong Kong on Thursday that Yeh was an ethnic-Chinese language cryptocurrency determine born in Hong Kong who emigrated to Canada whereas younger.
Lengthy earlier than Bitcoin, Yeh was reportedly constructing companies within the Vancouver expertise sector.
