The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused 17 people this Thursday of leading a pyramid crypto scam that raised 300 million dollars and harmed 40,000 investors, most of them Latinowith promises of great returns.
It's about the CryptoFX company, whose operations were already frozen at the end of 2022 by the stock market regulator considering that its founder, Mauricio Chavez, created a “Ponzi scheme” and diverted client funds together with his partner, Giorgio Benvenuto; Both were indicted.
“A scheme of this size requires many participants and as today's action demonstrates, we will bring charges not only against the main architects (…), but against all those who promoted their fraud illegally collecting victims,” one of the SEC officials, Gurbir Grewal, said in a statement.
According to the regulator, the 17 defendants were “leaders of the CryptoFX network“between 2020 and 2022, when they attracted investors to the alleged exchange platform cryptocurrencies with promises of returns of between 15 and 100 percent, which they generally did not keep.
The defendants, who hailed from Texas, California, Louisiana, Illinois and Florida, allegedly used the funds to pay purported returns to other investors, to pay commissions and bonuses to themselves, and to fund their own lifestyles.
Two defendants, Gabriel and Dulce Ochoa, continued to solicit investors after the SEC's blocking order and urged some to withdraw their complaints to the regulator if they wanted their money backwhile another defendant, Maria Saravia, told other investors that the regulator's action was false.
The SEC charges announced today span several crimes of violation of federal securities laws and seek permanent vetoes against the defendants and payments of restitution, fines and interest.
The alleged architects of the pyramid scamChavez and Benvenuto, are accused of raising about $2.7 billion from the Ponzi scheme and diverting $8 million for personal use, including $1.5 million that Chavez spent on cars, jewelry, adult entertainment and a house.
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