Just read about this case and honestly it's pretty dark. Kevin Mirshahi, a 25-year-old crypto entrepreneur running the Crypto Paradise Island Telegram group, got kidnapped back in June 2024 along with three others from a Montreal parking garage. Two of the victims showed up alive the next day, but Mirshahi didn't make it—authorities found his body months later in October at a local park.

Here's where it gets worse though. Turns out Kevin Mirshahi had been running a pump-and-dump scheme on a token called Marsan (MRS). The whole thing launched in April 2021 through a company called Marsan Exchange, created by Antoine Marsan and Bastien Francoeur. The token absolutely mooned right after launch—hit CAD $5.14 in just three days. But then the major holders cashed out and it crashed hard to $0.39. Classic rug pull pattern.

Mirshahi was getting paid in the token to promote it, and the scheme caught about 2,300 people, a lot of them teenagers between 16 and 20 years old. The Quebec financial regulator (AMF) had been investigating Kevin Mirshahi since 2021 because of this. They banned him from acting as a broker, froze his ability to do securities transactions, told him to take down all his social media posts. But he just kept going—ran another Telegram group called 'Amir' to keep pushing crypto investments anyway.

What's wild is this isn't even an isolated incident. Canada's been seeing this trend of crypto-linked crimes spike lately—kidnappings, attacks, fraud schemes. The Kevin Mirshahi case is just one of the more extreme examples that shows how messy things can get when you mix unregulated crypto promotion with vulnerable young investors. Definitely a cautionary tale about doing due diligence and being skeptical of these telegram investment groups.