A teen posing as an oligarch's son mysteriously jumped to his death after befriending a gangster and a crypto millionaire
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- Zac Brettler, 19, died after jumping from a fifth-floor balcony in London in 2019.
- Brettler had been posing as the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch, according to The Times.
- He spent his final evening with a gangster and a crypto investor, according to reports.
Zac Brettler showed no signs of depression before he jumped to his death from a fifth-floor London balcony opposite MI6 headquarters at the age of 19, according to his parents.
Rachelle and Matthew Brettler told The New Yorker that their son, an aspiring entrepreneur who attended a $38,000-a-year private school, had big plans for his future. He hadn't appeared to be suicidal, they said.
But the fraudulent lifestyle he had built, resulting in peculiar friendships with crypto millionaire Akbar Shamji and gangster Verinder "Dave" Sharma, is shrouded in a mystery, according to multiple reports.
Now, five years after his death, questions are being raised about the investigation into his last moments by London's Metropolitan Police.
Prisma by Dukas/Getty Images
A double life
Brettler's story is a tale around deceit, money, and influence — and how quickly a seemingly ordinary teenager from a relatively wealthy background can, unbeknownst to his parents, become embroiled in a world far from his own.
It was only after Brettler's death in November 2019 that his parents learned their son had a flair for fabricating his life story, according to reports.
Brettler became obsessed with wealth during his school years and would often lie about his parents' occupations. It earned him a reputation as a "compulsive liar," according to former classmates who spoke to The New Yorker.
He used the alter-ego "Zac Ismailov," and pretended to be the son of a dead Russian oligarch in order to befriend Shamji and Sharma, according to multiple reports.
Shamji, 52, is a cryptocurrency trader and businessman who lived in Mayfair, one of London's wealthiest neighborhoods, when he met Brettler in 2019, according to The New Yorker. The two bonded over entrepreneurship and were even said to be business partners, having discussed launching a line of CBD-infused skincare products and investing in a Kazakhstan mine, the same outlet added.
Sharma, meanwhile, was a gangster who lived in an apartment in Riverwalk, a luxury apartment complex in London. It's not clear how Brettler met Sharma, but they appeared to have a close relationship. Sharma allowed Brettler to stay at his home for a brief period after Brettler had fabricated a story about his mother barring him from the family's luxury properties, according to The New Yorker.
The Sunday Times reported that both Shamji and Sharma believed they would benefit from Brettler's fictional fortune. He told the men that his bank account was frozen, but he was worth £6 billion, or around $7.5 billion, The Times reported.
One evening, after growing suspicious of Brettler's story, the men agreed to confront him at Sharma's home, according to The Times report. But hours later, camera footage overlooking the property showed the teenager had jumped from the balcony into the River Thames.
The reason why remains unclear, even as new clues are uncovered.
The mystery deepens
A spokesperson for Metropolitan Police told Business Insider that it was unable to determine the reason that Brettler jumped following an inquest in December 2022. Nor have they sound evidence that Sharma or Shamji were involved.
Sharma refused to be questioned by the police, giving 181 "no comment" responses, The Times said. Instead, he wrote a note saying Brettler had been suicidal.
The publication added that both men failed to address the alleged dispute over the money.
There's also the question of whether Brettler had felt threatened by the men, or someone else, in the days leading up to his death. An unnamed friend of Brettler's told The New Yorker that he believed he was "being threatened by someone."
New evidence from GPS data
A new investigation published by The Sunday Times on 7th April shared evidence about Shamji and Sharma's movements on the evening of Brettler's death, which is said to have been overlooked by a junior police officer "who made errors in her analysis."
During interviews with police in December 2019 and March 2020, Shamji told officers that he had left the apartment at midnight, traveling in a rented Mercedes. After the investigation into Brettler's death began, his story changed; he now claimed had left "just after" 1 a.m. for his home in Mayfair, The Times said.
Photo by Tom Shaw/Getty Images
Data from the Mercedes' GPS tracker, phone records, and security camera footage published by The Times tell a different story.
Security cameras showed Shamji leaving the apartment at 1:20 a.m. and starting his car at 1:50 a.m. While driving around London, he attempted to call Sharma but didn't receive a call back until 2.12 a.m., The Times reported.
The evidence contradicts Sharma's account of events. He told police he was "heavily intoxicated" by 12:30 a.m., the outlet said.
While the details of the phone conversation are not known, it was thought to have changed the trajectory of the evening. Shamji swiftly turned around and began driving at twice the legal speed limit, the report said. He arrived at the apartment at 2:23 a.m., within the same minute that Brettler was thought to have jumped, the outlet said.
At around 2:45 a.m., Shamji left the apartment again. Security camera footage shows he stopped opposite the spot where Brettler had fallen and looked out onto the water. According to The New Yorker, Shamji denied seeing Brettler's body in the water, saying he would have immediately called the police if he had.
Brettler's body was discovered at around 7 a.m. the following morning. He had multiple injuries, including a broken jaw. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told BI that a pathologist was unable to determine if Zac's broken jaw and some injuries were caused by the fall or a "previous assault."
Just over one year after Brettler's death, Sharma was found dead in his apartment in December 2020.
The death wasn't ruled as suspicious, with various accounts being given on the cause. One informal explanation given to Brettler's parents was a drug overdose which could have been a suicide, according to another report by The Times in February. An unnamed associate told the outlet that Sharma had hit his head on the bathtub.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said there will soon be an inquest into Sharma's death. They weren't able to provide a date or further details.
Shamji moved to the US after Brettler's death, the Daily Mail reported. Though his current movements are largely a mystery, in 2022 he was publicly named as a speaker at the networking event Crypto Bahamas. Shamji did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
In a statement initially sent to The Times and obtained by BI, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said: "We robustly challenge the assertion that there were 'serious errors and gross incompetence' in the investigation."
They said the investigation into Brettler's death "lasted a number of years and we dedicated significant resource to finding answers."
When asked if it had made the errors outlined in the article, they said they would need to speak to the officer involved as well as review the evidence.
Nonetheless, it appears unlikely that the investigation will reopen following The Times' report.
"We do not believe that any alleged GPS data errors, even if proven to be accurate, would present scope for changing the findings of the police investigation," the statement said.
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