Following his arrest in Spain again in late 2020, Santi Fuentes has been charged in relation to ArbiStar.
Spanish prosecutors allege ArbiStar was a $92 million plus Ponzi scheme.
As reported by El Pais in a paywalled June sixth article;
After three years of investigations, which started in a court docket in Arona (Tenerife), the investigating Justice of the Peace José Luis Calama has uncovered his conclusions on Tuesday in a forceful order, with which he prosecutes seven defendants (amongst them, the alleged ringleader, Santiago Fuentes Jover) and figures the fraud at greater than 92 million euros.
In keeping with the choose, the enterprise they constructed for savers “was financially unviable from the beginning”, and the plot “solely bought smoke”.
It is a well mannered approach of claiming ArbiStar was a Ponzi scheme. BehindMLM reviewed ArbiStar in April 2019, coming to the identical conclusion.
In keeping with the Spanish investigation, Fuentes (above) ran ArbiStar by a “community” of ten shell firms.
“The fundamental premise on which Arbistar’s supply was primarily based was manifestly false. The enterprise mannequin provided was primarily based on fraud, because it supplied software program that needed to be renewed yearly and that by no means actually existed”, continues Justice of the Peace Calama.
ArbiStar’s Ponzi ruse was a buying and selling bot. This stays probably the most widespread MLM Ponzi ruses at the moment, more and more paired with an AI grift.
Sifuentes’ accomplice in crime, Diego Felipe Fernandez Nojarova (aka Diego Felipe Rikardo Fernández), has an arrest warrant out on him however stays at giant.
Fernandez (proper) is a Bulgarian nationwide.
In Might 2022 the Spanish Excessive Court docket, with the cooperation of Bulgarian authorities, seized a chalet belonging to Fernandez in Sofia. A “high-end” Mercedes-Benz was additionally recovered.
By means of court docket filings, in January 2022 Fernandez represented to the Spanish Excessive Court docket that he was dwelling in Bulgaria.
Given there’s a global arrest warrant out on him, if Fernandez continues to be in Bulgaria he’s assumed to be beneath the safety of Bulgaria’s corrupt officers.
Again in Spain, Fuentes’ bail has been set at €123 million euros. Justice of the Peace Calama believed ArbiStar took in additional than the €92 million euros in calculated losses.
To date the Spanish investigation into ArbiStar has recognized ~32,000 victims.
If convicted, Fuentes and the six accomplices prosecuted alongside him every resist eighteen years in jail.
