Cositorteano
. Adj. Which refers to an element with overtones of scam or pyramid.
The jargon of social networks made it a term with meaning before the RAE took it over
. It appears in journalistic articles, in comments in a cafe, on TV, in the newspaper. A word that is understood almost without explanation, a surname turned into an adjective. I live, circulating in the street.
Far from all that, behind bars, the owner of the surname waits. He protests when, in the moments he has to listen to the radio and follow reality closely, they mention the adjective that he gave birth to. He denies, but does not resign.
He says he is whole. He makes plans for later.
Leonardo Cositorto, the leader of the Generación Zoe business holding company, accused of leading an illicit association that turned into a ponzi-type scam, ignores the accusations. In dialogue with
Clarín
he accuses the Córdoba justice system almost as much as against his former partners, whom he accuses of having defrauded him.
This Friday
he served two years in the Bouwer prison in Cordoba,
where he is in preventive detention. The Prosecutor's Office No. 2 of Villa María, led by Juliana Companys, points to him as the leader of an illicit association that put together a monumental ponzi scheme that moved more than 120 million dollars globally. When they captured him, he had been on the run for a month in the Dominican Republic, where he did live Zooms to continue asking his savers to put up money.
It was the largest case of the summer of 2022.
Generation Zoe was a project born from Cositorto himself that started in 2017 as a series of coaching and soft skills courses taught over Zoom and
ended in a mega emporium that offered everything from its own cryptocurrency to hamburgers,
from soccer player passes to gold mines.
Its CEO maintains the same verbose style as when he gave lectures on coaching, but with a somewhat more seasoned tone. The two years after prison left him with betrayals, abandonments and even some bribery attempts that he denounces.
Right now a hunger strike has begun to make visible "the widespread corruption in the Córdoba system." He protests the refusal to receive the benefit of house arrest. He goes for a week and has already lost seven kilos, he says.
-What is your day to day life like in prison?
-Cositorto: The routine here is to be detained in the cell, they release you in the morning. Then they open a fenced patio for you. We have a public telephone, imagine the fights that sometimes arise with that, the discussions that arise. In our case I see that there are people with similar investigations, but they are waiting for the process outside, at home, at home. Today I haven't been able to see my son for 800 days, they won't let me in with food or money, I don't have food or medicine.
-In your case, the domiciliary refused because you were abroad for a month (N.de R.: I was in the Dominican Republic) when you had an arrest warrant. Why didn't you come back?
-From my team of lawyers they told me 'wait for us to tell you when you can come, that we will be presenting the bail or a domiciliary one waiting for you to appear to testify.' I am traveling all the time. At no time did I leave Argentina. So there is information that already started badly from the cradle, that I escaped. I went to Uruguay for a talk, from there to Colombia. At that moment they dictated international detention to me and there I contacted (his lawyer, Miguel Ángel) Pierri after having gone through three or four lawyers who unfortunately all they did was get money from me. I didn't do well with Pierri either. But let's not forget that the threat begins in September 2021 and ends up exploding on February 18, 2022 under extortion by prosecutor Companys to a woman who tells her that she has to report it because if she doesn't he will put her in prison. Then continue with the campaign where I was exposed. On social networks and on television, and in newspapers and radio, they have labeled me, they have killed me on a social level and they did everything possible so that the company cannot continue.
2021, rise and fall of Cositorto
Zoe had a growth boom during the confinement of the Covid pandemic
thanks to thousands of people who signed up to train in the courses it offered.
For this they paid a membership of $400.
But the heart of the business was the investment opportunities, where it took the money from those memberships and offered
returns in dollars that ranged from 7.5% to 50 percent
per month depending on the money invested. This attracted not only those who wanted to educate themselves, but also those who saw an irresistible investment opportunity. The money fell by the bucketful in the company's offices. Bags of dollars arrived, people sold property to put into the company.
2021 was the year of Cositorto. Business opportunities began with silver. He invested in Club Deportivo Español, where he took coach
Ricardo Caruso Lombardi
as manager . He promised to pay players with his own cryptocurrency. He began to appear in the media as a financial guru, coach or even
Viviana Canosa took him to his program as a 'political analyst'.
To be fair, the extraordinary returns that the company "paid religiously for 31 months" (as Cositorto defends itself) are explained by the entry of new investors.
Cositorto defends himself by swearing that he made the money through trading
in
crypto assets and high-risk stocks, which yielded
profits of up to 50% per month
. Those were executed by a team of traders who, today he says, all betrayed him. Starting with the mysterious Rosa María González Rincón, one of the last fugitives in the case.
The Villa María prosecutor's office maintains that it never found a single piece of evidence of these operations. Cositorto stated that the evidence is all on a hard drive that Fernando Burlando has. When consulted by
Clarín
, those around the media lawyer categorically deny this version. "We never worked with him," they emphasize.
For Cositorto, the one who turned it around in Córdoba was the Álvarez family, who were responsible for the AL Coaches office, a sub-headquarters of Zoe that operated in Villa María.
What is your theory as to why Zoe fell?
-They boycott me internally. José Vargas (a former partner of his in Zoe) did business with Claudio (Álvarez, Zoe's reference in Villa María). They manipulate some leaders, they want to stay with the company. and they say that they will arrange with the justice system to turn us around. And there they are prisoners. They detained us in Villa María, which belonged to the Álvarez family. Claudio is the one who could have enriched himself with cars or properties or land and fields that he bought, where is my illicit enrichment and the only thing I bought was a Chevrolet Onix? Not only have I not scammed anyone here, but I have been scammed.
They used me and abused my trust. Of course they have won and grown with me
. Of course I have been left aside. And the mind and greed, The human being, what has the problem in the heart.
-Did they ask you for bribes to leave?
-Of course they asked me. A former attorney general grabs my elbow, which is even filmed, and tells me '
I'm working on your case and I'm going to tell you to leave
.'
And then he sends me two emissaries and they ask me for 2 million dollars
. But recently two more also came with the verse that also, if I put in X amount of money I would go. And at no time did I accept anything because I am not going to accept the perverse system that I have to raise my hand for extortion. Here they deprive you of everything, they separate you from your family, they destroy you emotionally and physically. Not spiritually, because we obviously have a continuous and daily connection with God. But anyone here ends up getting pilled or ends up hanging or ends up depressed at the very least. And I am dedicated to lifting people up.
A monumental cause
Generation Zoe has half a dozen court cases open in the places where it had headquarters. In Goya (Corrientes), the case will go to trial before the end of the year. Cositorto, his vice president, Maxi Batista, cashier Miguel Echegaray and a handful of local leaders are signed up there.
In Salta, Rosario and Buenos Aires there are also other processes, but they are less advanced. In all of them the dynamic is the same: Cositorto accused as the leader of the scam because he is the president of the company, and some local leaders. Also in cases in Colombia, Mexico and Spain.
But the case of Villa María is different, because there they targeted the entire company. There are 26 defendants, ranging from bosses to accountants, treasurers, lawyers, legal advisors, traders and some promoters.
The case that most investigated the Zoe holding company made a request to bring to trial for some 173 incidents involving 76 victims,
totaling almost 8.5 million pesos and US$449,799
. The investigations in San Francisco, Villa Carlos Paz or Córdoba Capital would be added, which total almost 600 scammed people.
This week, Cositorto's defense filed a criminal complaint against prosecutor Companys of Villa María for "omission of the duties of a public official." According to them, her investigation found elements typical of a money laundering case which, being a federal crime, should be investigated by a federal court.
They also denounce a series of irregularities within the investigation process. "The prosecutor did not hand over the case. She wanted to keep it for herself," they protest from those around Cositorto.
Although scams are a crime under local jurisdiction, money laundering must be taken up by a federal court. This dispute is what caused the case in Buenos Aires to spend two years in a jurisdiction dispute between the Buenos Aires National Criminal and Correctional Court No. 1 and the federal court No. 4
This information is key, because
the judge in charge of No. 4 is Ariel Lijo, Javier Milei's candidate for the Supreme Court
. Lijo has had a mega-file for two years that must determine if there was money laundering within Generation Zoe.
"At that time the movement was minimal," maintain judicial sources. Some inquiries were made for possession of virtual wallets and some homes were raided, but the case did not progress.
Cositorto fights to be able to obtain a home address that allows him to see his son before arriving at trial. He wants to work with coaching again, away from any project that is linked to investments. He has an X account, in which he writes through a close collaborator who helps him.
His routine is complemented by a radio column that he has twice a week on 'Radio to read', a series hosted by businessman Rafael De Martino, former owner of Medicorp in the 90s.
EXCESS OF PREVENTIVE PRISON, CORRUPTION IN CORDOBA AND ARGENTINA, IT STINKS AND THAT'S WHAT I TELL YOU, NO!!!! We are in the era of TRUTH.
TODAY 7:20 p.m. https://t.co/524oTkuJ1V
with @Rafaeldemartino YOU CAN SEE THAT THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE HER. WITHOUT TRUTH THERE IS NO JUSTICE. pic.twitter.com/Q9AjWwnMMz
— Leonardo cositorto (@Leocositorto1) April 9, 2024
It is a space that it has had for a year on Radio El Mundo, which at first opposed it due to the columnist's controversial profile but gave up when it became one of the most listened to segments on the station.
They are mainly visits from Colombia.
There Cositorto is dispatched on Tuesdays and Thursdays about the cause, economics, and soft skills. He meets his enemies and gives his opinion on politics. He sounds informed, says that he listens to the radio every morning and asks to be told what is happening outside.
-How do you see the Milei government?
-
I see the government without a deep and structural plan, because there are underlying problems here. I don't see a clear vision, it seems to me that everything is tied up, stepping on salaries and pensions. We are going to start having problems because because consumption falls, we are going to collect less. I see it as having a quarter where the future is defined not only for Milei but for the Argentines.
-You mentioned several times that you consider yourself liberal. Did you get to know Milei?
-No, to the PRO people yes, when they took me to an event, I have eaten at the house of friends like the former mayor of Quilmes, Martiniano Molina. But I didn't know Milei. Yes, I have financially supported PRO campaigns and Milei legislators, but without any interest in anything or any favors. Simply because I saw that the Kirchner era had to end, that's all.