Africrypt founders back in South Africa years after platform collapse: Report

South Africa’s so-called “Bitcoin Brothers,” Raees and Ameer Cajee, have quietly returned to the country years after the collapse of their crypto investment platform Africrypt, according to a new TV investigation.

A segment aired Sunday by investigative program “Carte Blanche” said the pair is residing inside the gated Zimbali Estate in KwaZulu-Natal, MyBroadband reported on Monday. According to the report, journalists attempted to approach the property but were blocked by private security.

The team also reportedly traced the brothers to a holiday location in Umhlanga and a recent address in Johannesburg, but failed to make direct contact.

Gerhard Botha, a lawyer representing an investor who claims to have lost about $50 million, said legal papers have still not been served. “They can protect themselves. They’ve got security. Because they have money,” Botha told the program.

Cointelegraph reached out to law firms representing duped investors for comment, but had not received a response by publication.

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Africrypt pitched 13% monthly returns

The Cajees operated Africrypt between 2019 and 2021, promoting the platform as a high-yield crypto investment service. Investors were promised returns of up to 13% per month through a proprietary trading system said to rely on artificial intelligence. The company accepted deposits in both South African rand and cryptocurrency.

Africrypt unraveled on April 13, 2021, when the founders informed users that the platform had been hacked and its holdings stolen. Weeks later, the brothers left South Africa, eventually traveling through the Maldives before reaching Dubai amid pandemic travel restrictions.

Early media reports suggested as much as $3.6 billion had disappeared, but subsequent investigations placed the figure closer to $40 million to $50 million, according to MyBroadband. The exact amount of investor losses remains unknown.

A fund manager claims his losses would have been worth $50 million today. Source: Carte Blanche

The case drew international attention as the founders moved across multiple jurisdictions, including Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates. Ameer Cajee was later arrested in Switzerland in 2021 while visiting safe-deposit boxes believed to contain hardware wallets holding cryptocurrency. He was released on bail months later.

Related: South Africa’s central bank says no ‘strong immediate need’ for CBDC

South Africa warns crypto, stablecoins pose new risks

In November 2025, South Africa’s central bank identified digital assets and stablecoins as an emerging risk to the financial system as crypto adoption accelerated. In its second Financial Stability Report for 2025, the South African Reserve Bank said users across the country’s three largest crypto exchanges reached 7.8 million by July, with about $1.5 billion held in custody at the end of 2024.

The bank warned that the borderless nature of crypto could allow funds to bypass exchange-control rules governing capital flows. It also noted that US dollar-pegged stablecoins have increasingly replaced Bitcoin (BTC) and other major tokens as the primary trading pair on local platforms due to their lower volatility.

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