‘My life was not worth living’
Widow of former Quadriga owner hopes her book dispels rumours that surged after husband’s death
When she was 26 years old, the woman who would become known to the world as Jennifer Robertson swiped right on a Tinder profile that would change her life, ruin her life and then almost end it.
Robertson (she assumed the name after splitting with her first husband and deciding her family name no longer suited) would marry the man she met through the app that day. Gerald Cotten was a like a dream to her, at first: he owned and ran his own company — a cryptocurrency trading platform called Quadriga — and like her, loved to travel.
Behind the scenes, he was something else, too: the mastermind behind one of the most lucrative, though ultimately doomed, scams in Canadian history.
In 2018, shortly after they wed, they flew to India for a luxury vacation, and to attend the opening of an orphanage they were funding. However, soon after arriving, Cotten, who had Crohn’s Disease, fell violently ill and died at 30 years old.
His death kicked off the unravelling of what was found to be a massive Ponzi scheme. Auditors and lawyers would only ever recover a fraction of the more than $200 million of users’ money that was supposedly in Quadriga accounts.
Cotten’s death also threw Robertson into the spotlight, and by her account, under the bus. She has always claimed that she knew nothing about her husband’s scams, but with him dead, she became the face
of them anyway. Online, she was the subject of harried speculation: that she had killed her husband; that she had covered up his fake death; that her serial name changes were proof she was guilty of … something.
Eventually, she agreed to give up almost everything she owned to Quadriga’s creditors, including homes in Nova Scotia and B.C., the family yacht, Cotten’s plane, her real estate business and even her engagement ring. One night, when she was at her lowest, she tried to kill herself with prescription Ativan and red wine.
Robertson has since built a new life. She moved into the attic of her father’s cottage; she lives there still. She went back to school. This March, she’s expecting a baby girl with her partner.
Robertson has rarely discussed her role in the scandal. But this week, she spoke to the Star about her life with Cotten and her new memoir, “Bitcoin Widow,” out Tuesday.
A lot of this book is about the toll Gerry’s death and the mess he left behind took on you. After all the work you did to move on, why write a book at all?
I always wanted to tell the general public and the affected users what really happened. I felt that my story was never fairly reported on. I also wrote a book because of the issue of mental health. When I tried to take my life, I was so embarrassed. I thought “people are going to judge me, or think less than me.” I thought my life was not worth living. And I want people know that you can come back from that point.
After Gerry’s death, you became the public face of his company and the public focus for a lot of rage. You eventually lost almost everything you owned. And yet you say that you don’t regret meeting Gerry and that you still love him, why?
There are dark days I wake up and wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t met Gerry. But I did absolutely love the person that I knew. This Gerry that he turned out to be? That person is so hard to relate to the Gerry that I fell in love with. He was so unbelievably kind and caring. He adored me. He was the best husband I could ever have hoped for.
This book is, in many ways, about what you didn’t know. You say you didn’t know Quadriga was a fraud, that Gerry had been running online scams since he was a teen or that he was stealing millions from investors to fund your lifestyle. Where did you think all that money was coming from?
I thought it was coming from his profits. He would talk to me about how bitcoin was so successful. He would say bitcoin is going to the moon and be all excited about how it was affecting his company.
What do you think would have happened to the company, and to your life, if Gerry hadn’t died when he did?
I honestly have no idea. Because if the hole was as big as it was, I don’t know how he would have ever dug himself out of it. And I don’t know if that’s part of this intense stress that he had in the six months before he died. He just would drink all night, even if I wasn’t drinking.
You write that, after Gerry’s death, creditors, reporters and others twisted the ordinary events of your life “into puzzle pieces in a grand conspiracy.” I don’t think there’s any question that you suffered tremendously because of that. Who do you blame for that suffering?
I don’t know if there’s anyone specifically to blame, except I really kind of want to blame Gerry. As much as I was hurt by the media and all the accusations by the affected users, they were just going off of the facts that were known.
“This Gerry that he turned out to be? That person is so hard to relate to the Gerry that I fell in love with.
JENNIFER ROBERTSON ON HER FORMER HUSBAND, GERALD COTTEN
You write that investors “trusted Gerry, accepted the risks until they got burned then looked around for someone to blame.”
You also write that Gerry “should never have been in a position to hold all the levers of a multibillion-dollar company with no internal and external oversight.” Do you think anyone — investors, banks, regulators — besides Gerry should share any of the blame?
Ultimately, it was Gerry. But I do think that regulations and regulators are there to keep other people responsible and in line, and I wish that there had been more of that because then Gerry wouldn’t been able to get away with what he did for so long.
There was a Vanity Fair story that played off two narratives: the narrative of Gerry the Royal Screwup: where scams begat scams, and the Mastermind Theory, where he planned to keep the con going as long as possible before vanishing with the money. Where do you think the truth lies?
This is a tough question. And I thought about it too, because I know he knows that I never would have vanished with him if I found out what was going on, like absolutely not. And I find it hard to believe that Gerry would want to be anywhere without me. I can make guesses all day, and it really sort of depends on the day. But either way, to be honest, when I really think about it, I don’t even know if he knew what he was going to do.