Poland Accuses Man of Colluding with Gang to Embezzle Cryptocurrency Exchange Funds
The Polish National Prosecutor's Office has accused a man named Roman Ż. of participating in an organized crime group and allegedly embezzling 7.8 million zlotys (approximately $2.1 million) from users deposited in the cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto (formerly BitBay) by tampering with exchange computer records and interfering with data processing and transmission. The two charges carry a maximum combined sentence of 10 years in prison; Roman Ż. denies all charges, and the prosecution has requested the court to impose temporary detention on him.
According to public reports, Roman Ż. was arrested on September 5 in the Silesia region of Poland and subsequently questioned; his lawyer stated that Roman Ż. had previously assisted in managing the exchange before it was renamed Zonda and claimed he was a business partner of the exchange's founder, Sylwester Suszek. During the search, police seized several valuable watches and related documents. The prosecution had previously expressed concerns that Roman Ż. planned to travel to China to escape, while his lawyer responded that the trip was for business and that he had purchased a return ticket for September 13.
Roman Ż. is the fifth suspect to be formally charged in this case: previously, the President of the Polish Olympic Committee, Radosław P. (arrested for accepting bribes and prioritizing certain creditors), well-known trader Rafał Z., and Anna P. and Jaromira W. (both suspected of participating in organized crime, asset transfer, and money laundering) had been detained, with three of them already ordered by the court to be held for up to three months. On July 30, the prosecution merged the Zonda fraud investigation with another ongoing investigation concerning the disappearance of founder Suszek, which has lasted four years.
Suszek founded BitBay in 2014 and has been missing since March 10, 2022, after disappearing at a gas station in Czeladź; his family received unverified "kidnapping" messages involving a Bitcoin ransom. According to his family, Suszek had been marginalized from the company he founded before his disappearance, which has since undergone several name changes and has been described as a "hostile takeover."
Zondacrypto ceased operations on April 23 this year, with the website taken offline, users unable to withdraw funds, and the platform's token ZND price nearly dropping to zero. According to audits and on-chain data, the Bitcoin reserves in the exchange's hot wallet plummeted from about 55.7 BTC in August 2024 to just 0.18 BTC in March this year. By the end of 2024, the company owed customers up to €722.4 million, with only €9.7 million in cash on hand, and loans to related parties skyrocketing from €12.3 million to €93.6 million within a year, including a €75 million unsecured cryptocurrency loan to an unidentified borrower.
From the perspective of fund flow and regulatory mechanisms, the Zonda case exposes the typical "pooling" risk of cryptocurrency exchanges in the absence of prudent regulation: the exchange's terms effectively allowed the misappropriation of customer funds for investment, contradicting its claimed "asset custody" promises. From 2021 to 2024, the audit opinions shifted from "unable to express an opinion" to "qualified opinion" and then to "unqualified opinion," yet no explanations were provided for the evidence gaps, and the 2025 annual report was not submitted. Meanwhile, between April 5 and 15, before the platform's collapse, approximately 99 million tokens were transferred from the exchange's wallet to external trading platforms, while ordinary users saw artificially inflated token prices—indicating that informed insiders likely cashed out in advance under conditions of information asymmetry, while the funds of ordinary investors were continuously drained, ultimately leaving the losses to be borne by tens of thousands of ordinary users.
Supplementary information: The estimated minimum loss caused by the case is about 350 million zlotys (approximately $94 to $96 million), with affected users ranging from 30,000 to 57,000, and over 3,600 criminal reports received. The Estonian entity BB Trade Estonia OÜ, to which the exchange belongs, was officially declared bankrupt by the Tallinn court on August 27, and creditors must file claims by October 27. Legislative efforts in Poland to implement the EU's regulatory framework for cryptocurrency markets (MiCA) have also been stalled due to the president's three vetoes and the parliament's failure to gather the required votes to overturn the veto on September 4, leaving Poland without a dedicated cryptocurrency regulatory authority.
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Since its establishment in 2014, BitBay was once one of the largest early cryptocurrency exchanges in Poland, but founder Suszek was ultimately marginalized from the company he founded and has since gone missing in a mysterious case since 2022—this history of "founders being sidelined and then disappearing" closely resembles the case of Gerald Cotten, founder of the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX, who died suddenly, with reports later revealing he had sole control over approximately $190 million in customer crypto assets, and some cold wallets being non-existent. When an exchange's ledger and private keys are highly concentrated in the hands of a few insiders, once these individuals exit, go missing, or turn against each other, the true state of the platform's assets may never be fully restored.
The funding paths revealed in the Zonda case illustrate a classic "shadow lending" mechanism in the crypto industry: the company promises that customer assets are held by the platform, but in reality, it exploits loopholes in the terms to transfer customer funds under the guise of loans to related parties—within just one year, loans to related parties skyrocketed from €12.3 million to €93.6 million, including a €75 million unsecured crypto loan to an unnamed entity. As long as the inflow and outflow of new customer deposits remain balanced, this mechanism can continue to operate until a sustained withdrawal wave occurs in 2025 (customer liabilities fell from €722.4 million to nearly €343 million), ultimately collapsing the exchange's already dwindling usable reserves, leading to the public collapse in April this year.
In the context of the industry, the structure of the Zonda case shares the same underlying issues as the collapses of FTX in 2022 (where customer funds were mixed with those of related trading entity Alameda Research), QuadrigaCX in 2019, and even the loss of 850,000 Bitcoins by Mt. Gox in 2014: a very small number of insiders simultaneously hold both the asset custody rights and the ledger recording rights, and there is a lack of independent audits or licensing regulations with actual enforcement power. The peculiar aspect of Poland's case is that the exchange has long operated under an Estonian license, which expired just as the EU's MiCA regulatory framework came into full effect in July this year—meaning that the critical window for the exchange's reserves to be drained coincided with the regulatory vacuum in Poland and the transition to the new EU regulations.
Structurally, this is essentially a capital transfer occurring in the absence of regulation: when a jurisdiction lacks mandatory custody qualifications, reserve proof, and independent audit requirements with actual accountability, the party that simultaneously holds the private keys and the ledger possesses the dual power to both misreport liabilities and transfer assets without timely detection—this is precisely reflected in the specific charge against Roman Ż. for "tampering with computer records" at the personal level, as well as the €93.6 million in related party loans at the institutional level. The fact that Poland's MiCA supporting legislation has been vetoed three times by the president and that the September parliamentary vote to overturn the veto fell short by 25 votes illustrates that the speed at which such platforms accumulate and transfer customer assets consistently outpaces the speed at which the necessary legal frameworks can be implemented—this is a recurring time lag seen in nearly every major exchange collapse case before stricter licensing systems are ultimately introduced.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Whoever simultaneously holds the ledger and private keys holds the right to disappear.
- Every day that reserve proof is delayed increases the opportunity for the hole to grow.
- The speed of regulatory legislation will always lag behind the speed at which the pool of funds is drained.