Victor Su’s AAX crypto fraud is a fascinating tale of Chinese organized crime in the 21st century. From Hong Kong to a secret bolthole in Canada, his story is much more than what it seems.
Welcome to Whale Hunting, a weekly newsletter and podcast delving into the hidden worlds of wealth and power from the team at Brazen. For more of Project Brazen's work – including the The Illuminator, Fat Leonard and The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, visit brazen.fm. This week, a deep dive into the fascinating crypto fraudster Victor Su.
A little-noticed detail buried in a recent liquidation report reveals that Victor Su, the mastermind behind the $30 million AAX crypto exchange collapse, spent nearly two years hiding in Vancouver, Canada – until a dramatic raid by authorities forced him to flee back to Hong Kong (via Macau and a mystery helicopter ride), where he was arrested at the airport. The full story of his Canadian hideout, and what investigators found when they raided his Vancouver residence, is a tale of international legal cooperation, continued criminal activity, and a fugitive who thought he was beyond the reach of the law.
On the surface, Atom Asset Exchange (AAX) was once a shining star of Hong Kong's crypto scene. Launched in 2019 with great fanfare, it touted itself as the first digital asset exchange to use the London Stock Exchange's high-performance trading technology. It quickly amassed over 2 million users, eager to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on what seemed like a cutting-edge platform. But behind the scenes of this rising exchange was an enigmatic figure named Victor Su (Su Weiyi), a man who would soon become known as the orchestrator of one of Asia's most brazen crypto collapses.
For years, Victor Su operated in the shadows. Officially, he was a major investor and senior figure at AAX, though few outside the company knew much about him. He rarely courted the spotlight; unlike many crypto CEOs, Su had no public social media presence and seldom appeared at industry events. Some employees later said they had never met him in person, despite his outsized influence.
Do you know anything about AAX or Victor Su? Get in touch at projectbrazen@protonmail.com — we’d love to follow up.
It all began to unravel on a Sunday night in mid-November 2022. Without warning, AAX suspended all customer withdrawals. A notice on its website claimed this was "scheduled maintenance" to fix unspecified "critical vulnerabilities." Customers were assured it was a temporary outage. But as hours turned into days and then weeks, panic set in. Inside AAX's private Telegram groups, thousands of users around the world began to fear the worst – that their money was gone for good.
Hong Kong, where AAX's core team operated, had seen its share of crypto drama, but this felt different. This was an exchange that marketed itself as safe and compliant, even holding one of the few Hong Kong crypto trading licenses. Now, its promises were ringing hollow. By late November, employees found themselves suddenly cut off – locked out of company email and Slack accounts. Rumors flew that AAX was insolvent, potentially another casualty of the FTX collapse that had rocked the crypto world just days earlier. (Some staff later told the Financial Times that a few large holders withdrew their funds after FTX's implosion, triggering a liquidity crunch at AAX.)
On November 28, Ben Caselin publicly quit the company, tweeting that he had lost all faith in the management's decisions. "Bad timing for scheduled maintenance… trust is broken," he wrote grimly. His departure sent an unambiguous signal: something was very wrong at AAX. That same day, desperate clients even stormed AAX's office in Lagos, Nigeria, only to find empty chairs and unanswered questions – a scene repeated in Hong Kong and Singapore where AAX's offices and co-working spaces went dark.
By early December, enraged users took justice into their own hands. They organized online, forming Telegram channels with tens of thousands of members – a crowdsourced detective agency of angry creditors. In those chats, leaked photos of AAX executives' passports and ID cards began circulating as users tried to track down anyone responsible. Among the prime targets was Victor Su. But Su was nowhere to be found. According to one AAX user-investigator, "during that period when they said they were doing maintenance, a lot of key management started deleting their online presence." It was as if Su and his lieutenants were ghosts, vanishing into thin air.
We’re ramping up. More deep dives. More special features. And next week, we’re bringing back our infamous Unofficial Rich List—our attempt to uncover who’s really the richest on Earth (not just who made the Forbes cut).
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