Despite being rife with scams and fraud, there had been very little crypto litigation until a few years ago. After the ‘Bitcoin boom’ which saw prices rise beyond the small change it had previously traded at, people suddenly became interested in recovering their assets, which were now worth significantly more than they had acquired them for. Even then, the amounts were negligible when compared to the value of the asset class.
That all changed when a plucky upstart began taking on the big fish in a series of class action lawsuits. Roche Freedman LLP had, in Crypto parlance, ‘forked’ from the high-profile law firm Boies Schiller. The firm, led by Kyle Roche and Devin ‘Vel’ Freedman rapidly garnered a reputation for high stakes crypto litigation, taking on the most popular “stablecoin” Tether and even the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator himself.
In December 2021, Kyle Roche was invited to London by an individual named Mauricio Andres Villavicencio de Aguilar, who claimed to be an associate of Christen Ager-Hanssen, whom Mauricio claimed was potentially interested in investing in Roche’s litigation fundraising company, Ryval.
After a short Zoom call, Roche agreed to fly to London the following month to continue the discussion in person. Ager-Hanssen paid for Roche and his then fiancé to fly first class and paid for their hotel for the weekend.
Upon arriving at the Custos office (Ager-Hanssen’s company he aggressively stole from a former business partner – but more on that soon) in Mayfair, Roche claims Ager-Hanssen pressed his index finger into his forehead, in an attempt to intimidate him (a method we’ll be exploring in later pieces). Ager-Hanssen told Roche if he were to invest, he’d need to know what Roche could do.
Ager-Hanssen had said he was interested in Custos fronting some of the $6 million Roche was hoping to raise, in return for powering his student advertising platform ‘STUK’ with the AVAX token. With a follow up meeting planned in New York the following week:
The pair goaded Roche into bragging and exaggerating claims about what he could do for his potential new benefactor, a conversation which continued into the evening when the associate took Roche to the luxury Connaught Hotel. Roche claims Ager-Hanssen turned up at the restaurant and sat at a nearby table 15 minutes later with a ‘tall blonde man’.
Roche claims to have woken up the next morning “feeling rough” and believing his “drink was laced with a drug”. Roche was right to be suspicious, as on the 26 August 2022, covert recordings from the meeting were released on a kompromat website called Cryptoleaks.
The fallout led to Roche Freedman being removed from their high-profile Crypto cases and Roche removing himself from the firm entirely and returning to New York.
In the days following the release, Ager-Hanssen vehemently denied having anything to do with the sting, even threatening to hunt down the person behind the website if they did not release the full unedited video.
Christen even tried to paint himself as the victim in this, claiming he was set up:
By the 14th September, Ager-Hanssen was tweeting about a report he has supposedly compiled running to nearly 500 pages on Kyle Roche and Ava Labs. To our knowledge, he has never actually sent it to anybody as not even Roche’s adversaries reported on it.
Following his sacking (or whatever went down at nChain, Ager-Hanssen admitted he was behind CryptoLeaks and the Kyle Roche sting all along.
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He also admits Mauricio Andres Villavicencio de Aguilar’ was a fake name and the individual, according to him, was a former Mossad agent now working for controversial intelligence firm Black Cube, although no evidence for this was provided. Black Cube made headlines around the world when it emerged the company had been hired by Harvey Weinstein to dig up dirt on his accusers.
The admission came as a surprise to nobody, but it did lift the veil on just how manipulative Christen Ager-Hanssen is.
In 2000, Ager-Hanssen planned to entrap Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, a Japanese venture capitalist who was reportedly worth about US$33 billion at the time.
He is also said to have told a waitress: “Making money makes me so horny.”
in 2017, following his disastrous takeover of Johnston Press, he was profiled in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, in which he states he: “provides conflict management services to eccentric billionaires, using methods such as covert recording and social engineering
“When an eccentric billionaire has an issue, they call me,” he says. “I’ve done five or six cases in England and allover.” he is quoted as saying.
In 2011, he was reported for extortion and witness tampering by Tom Berhard Knudsen, the legal representative for Norwegian development company JB Ugland Holding, whom claimed he had been secretly recorded in meetings by Christen with a hidden camera.
Knudsen claims he was blackmailed by Ager-Hanssen, whom reportedly sent him threatening text messages and emails.
In 2014, Ager-Hanssen admitted to bugging a meeting at his villa whilst helping Mats Qviberg in litigation with HQ Bank. He also created sock-puppet accounts in order to solicit information pertinent to the case.
A contemporaneous article stated: “The initial mission was to convince HQ AB’s chairman Christer Sandberg for months that Mats Qviberg was ready for settlement. One evening at the end of April this year, he was invited to dinner with the Qviberg couple. In the villa on Lidingö, Ager-Hanssen had rigged a hidden recording.”
Further in the post, it states: “Ager-Hanssen has also developed a strategy for social media. He has opened a Twitter account for Mats Qviberg and also ran another, anonymous account called Mr Scoop.
“For a month, he built up a persona that singled out Mats Qviberg as an enemy and urged others to leak material about him and the HQ case. He also sought out people close to the case.”
“My task has been to pretend to negotiate with Christer Sandberg about settlement, in order to produce all the evidence. I have met him regularly and I have documented every conversation we have had”
Christen Ager-Hanssen (Source)
in 2016, Ager-Hanssen covertly recorded the filmmaker Fredrik von Krusenstjernas, who was intending to make a documentary about the collapse of HQ Bank. The recording was uploaded to YouTube in order to damage the filmmakers credibility, which seemingly worked, as all development on the project was abandoned.
So, contrary to what he publicly claims, it seems evident here that Ager-Hanssen intended to set Kyle Roche up using his proven social engineering and underhanded recording techniques.
More to follow…
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