The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that a panel of the B.C. Securities Commission has found a cryptocurrency trading platform and its owner lied to customers and diverted $13-million in assets to gambling and personal accounts. A Canadian Press dispatch to The Globe quotes the commission saying that the company operating under the name ezBtc and incorporated by then-B.C. resident David Smillie told customers their bitcoins would be held in "cold storage," a more secure method of keeping digital assets off-line. Instead, the panel found about a third of all the crypto assets that customers deposited with the platform between 2016 and 2019 were diverted to gambling sites or to Mr. Smillie's personal accounts on other crypto trading platforms. The commission says in a statement issued Monday that it hired a forensic data analytics firm to determine what happened to the cryptocurrency, and some of it was "quickly transferred" either to Mr. Smillie's accounts or two gambling websites. It says the panel found that Mr. Smillie directed the affairs of ezBtc. The commission notes ezBtc was dissolved in 2022 and did not take part in the hearing, and while Mr. Smillie did not attend, he was represented by a lawyer.