In recent years, cryptocurrencies have gained popularity not only as an alternative means of saving and payment, but also as a form of investment… and, with it, an option to obtain substantial profits. This, of course, has attracted all kinds of cyber-swindlers who have jumped on the wave of ‘crypto’.
One of the most prominent cases of this in recent times, at least in Spain, is that of arbistara cryptocurrency investment platform that promised great benefits (8%-15% per month) thanks to the use of an artificial intelligence algorithm called ‘Community Bot’.
Thus, the only condition for investors was that they could not withdraw their money in the first two months, but now we know that, during a period of just over a year (between May 2019 and September 2020), the platform only dedicated itself to defrauding more than 92 million euros from more than 32,000 investors (of which so far it has been possible to identify just over 5,000).
Curiosity: the Arbistar app is still available in the Google Play Store, although it hasn’t been updated for three years.
This is how the ‘shepherd’ was set up
Therefore, yesterday the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama prosecuted seven alleged members of Arbistar for crimes of criminal organization and massive fraud, imposing a joint and several bail of €123 million (on suspicion that the amount defrauded could greatly exceed the 92 million found so far).
However, the most notable thing about the judge’s order is that it establishes that ‘Community Bot’ never existed and that the platform only sold smoke.
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55 of Arbistar’s investors invested more than €50,000, and 17 invested more than €250,000
All those unfulfillable profits were actually coming out of a classic pyramid scheme., in which part of the money from new investors was used to pay off previous investors and build trust in the system. Of course, the ‘shack’ would only work as long as the rate of entry of new investors was greater than the mass of pre-existing investors.
For a time they focused on creating a powerful acquisition network, with which they were able to generate an image of profitability and implement a referral plan in which investors received compensation for attracting new clients.
They added to this an effective presence on social networks and the holding of public promotional events in hotels and conference rooms to attract more people.
According to the judge, the undisputed leader of the plot was Santiago Fuentes Jover: he has also determined that Jover was the one who designed the fraudulent strategy and gave instructions to keep it going both to the employees of the company and to the rest of those involved.
Image | PYRO on Pixabay
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The news
It was 100% smoke, but it caught thousands of cryptocurrency investors making up using an AI algorithm: they ended up in the hot seat
was originally posted on
Genbeta
by Marcos Merino.