Raees and Ameer Cajee are back in South Africa. The brothers behind Africrypt—a crypto platform that collapsed in 2021—now live behind gates and private security in KwaZulu-Natal.
Investors still can’t serve them legal papers.
A Carte Blanche investigation aired Sunday tracked the pair to Zimbali Estate, a gated community on South Africa’s east coast. Journalists tried to approach the property. Private security turned them away. The team also traced the brothers to a holiday spot in Umhlanga and a recent Johannesburg address. No direct contact made.
Gerhard Botha represents an investor who claims $50 million in losses. He told the program legal papers remain unserved. “They can protect themselves. They’ve got security. Because they have money,” Botha said.
That money came from somewhere.
Africrypt operated between 2019 and 2021 as a high-yield crypto investment service. The pitch: 13% monthly returns through proprietary AI trading algorithms. The platform accepted both South African rand and cryptocurrency deposits. Thousands bought in.
Everything stopped April 13, 2021. The Cajees informed users the platform had been hacked. Holdings stolen. Weeks later, the brothers left South Africa. They traveled through the Maldives during pandemic lockdowns, eventually reaching Dubai. The trail extended through Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates.
Early media reports put missing funds at $3.6 billion. Subsequent investigations slashed that figure to $40 million to $50 million, according to MyBroadband. The exact loss amount remains unknown. No comprehensive audit was ever completed.
Ameer Cajee was arrested in Switzerland in 2021 while visiting safe-deposit boxes believed to contain hardware wallets holding cryptocurrency. Swiss authorities released him on bail months later. That was the last confirmed legal action against either brother.
Now they’re home. Living openly in one of South Africa’s most exclusive estates. The question is what happens next.
South Africa’s legal system moves slowly when defendants have resources and security teams. The Cajees clearly have both. Investors have struggled for years to navigate jurisdictional complexity as the brothers moved across borders. Serving papers is the first step in any civil recovery process. That hasn’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, crypto adoption in South Africa keeps growing. The country’s central bank flagged digital assets as an emerging financial risk in its November 2025 Financial Stability Report. Users across South Africa’s three largest crypto exchanges reached 7.8 million by July. Roughly $1.5 billion sat in custody at the end of 2024.
The South African Reserve Bank warned that crypto’s borderless nature could allow funds to bypass exchange-control rules governing capital flows. Those same borderless features helped the Cajees move across multiple jurisdictions while investors tried to chase them through courts.
The central bank also noted US dollar-pegged stablecoins increasingly replaced Bitcoin and other major tokens as primary trading pairs on local platforms. Lower volatility makes stablecoins attractive for everyday trading. But the infrastructure that enables that trading also creates new fraud vectors.
Africrypt wasn’t South Africa’s first crypto fraud. It won’t be the last. The pattern repeats: unrealistic returns promised, AI or proprietary systems mentioned, sudden hack claimed, founders disappear. What makes this case unusual is the return.
Most crypto fraudsters stay gone. The Cajees came back. That suggests either extreme confidence in legal protection or calculation that South African authorities lack resources to prosecute effectively. Maybe both.
Carte Blanche’s investigation confirms the brothers are physically present and accessible—if you can get past private security at a gated estate. That’s more than investors knew for years when the Cajees bounced between countries with non-extradition reputations.
Botha’s comment about money and security points to the core problem with recovering funds from crypto fraud. Unlike traditional finance, there’s no regulatory framework forcing platforms to maintain insurance or segregated customer accounts. When Africrypt collapsed, there was no deposit insurance to tap. No clearinghouse to unwind trades. Just missing cryptocurrency and founders who left the country.
The Swiss arrest suggested authorities tracked at least some funds to hardware wallets in safe-deposit boxes. What happened to those wallets after Ameer’s release on bail remains unclear. Swiss banking secrecy and cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous nature create opacity that traditional fraud investigations struggle to penetrate.
South Africa’s evolving crypto regulatory environment may eventually close some of these gaps. But the Reserve Bank’s recent report makes clear the country is still assessing risks rather than implementing comprehensive rules. That’s the environment the Cajees returned to.
Investors who lost money in 2021 are still fighting for recovery four years later. The brothers are living in a luxury estate with private security. The contrast isn’t subtle.
Question is whether South African prosecutors have appetite to pursue criminal charges now that the Cajees are back in jurisdiction. Civil suits require serving papers—still not accomplished. Criminal prosecution requires different thresholds of evidence and state resources.
For now, the Bitcoin Brothers are home. Protected by gates and guards. While investors wait.
