The yacht sails slowly and unhurriedly through the turquoise waters of the Dubai coast, one of the most exotic —and expensive— paradises in the world.
Upstairs he's partying in full swing: a DJ waves from the stern of the boat, drinks and beers pass by with lime wedges embedded in their necks.
The girls in bikinis and pareos dance, as well as a group of boys in white shirts open on the chest and sunglasses.
Everything is laughter.
But there is someone in the background that is out of tune.
He has a light blue long-sleeved shirt, khaki pants and black stockings.
She also has a red alert from Interpol and an international arrest warrant.
Héctor Luis Yrimia (63), the last fugitive from the Zoe Generation cause
, reappeared almost out of the blue on the Instagram live of a striking broker called Futswap.
A finance and cryptocurrency company linked to quite particular characters.
All of them gathered under the sun of Dubai, a paradise that became —according to the appreciation of several specialists—
a mecca for Ponzi schemes.
Yrimia, who was a judge of the Nation, investigated the AMIA case and was close to reaching federal jurisdiction, was legal director of the Zoe Generation holding company.
He was the person who had to try to appear legal in business.
Luis Yrimia, second from the right, together with Leonardo Cositorto (center), together with the accounting and legal team of Generación Zoe.
The Villa María prosecutor's office
formally charged him in the case investigating the alleged pyramid scheme
that kept the savings of some 600 victims in Córdoba alone.
Yrimia was charged by prosecutor Juliana Companys, who is in charge of the file.
It was almost a year ago, when the business holding company that promised dollar earnings of up to 7.5 percent a month collapsed under its own weight and due to
a countless number of unusual businesses that ate up the money that was coming in
.
Like a gold mine or a false authorization to operate on the Stock Market.
These two, affirms Justice, were proposed by Yrimia himself.
Companys ordered his arrest, but the former judge was no longer in the country.
He was in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where he has a residence and where the laws protect him: there is no extradition agreement and, despite the three letters issued from Córdoba, Interpol in that country never made any progress.
They didn't even give them an answer.
From the Middle East, Yrimia affirmed that she was at the disposal of the Justice, gave interviews detaching herself from the business, threatened to turn herself in twice and even
launched a complaint for almost 10 million dollars
against the Companys prosecutor.
Yrimia had traveled to Dubai on several occasions representing Zoe, and there is even a video of him from the end of 2021 where he is seen telling that offices would be opened in the United Arab Emirates.
By the time everything started to fall apart, he was already there installed.
What is not known yet is doing what.
What is Futswap?
Héctor Luis Yrimia, at the Futswap yacht party held in Dubai on January 20
Yrimia's appearance occurred in a
ten-minute Instagram live published by the Instagram account @Futswap_es on January 20.
There the judge can be seen on different occasions chatting with others present at a "corporate party" organized by the firm, as confirmed by another attendee's post.
Although he does not speak to the camera, his figure appears clear on a couple of occasions.
Then they would delete it, although they managed to capture it on social networks.
Yrimia's link with Futswap is not new and comes from the time of Generation Zoe.
Already in 2019 they were talking about doing something together.
In a video from November 2021, he is seen telling that Zoe has
"a fintech registered in Sweden",
which allowed Leonardo Cositorto's company to receive money from any country.
"That company is called Futswap by Zoe," continues Yrimia.
In case there are any doubts, in the video the fugitive spells it out.
According to Yrimia, the new partner company would allow bank accounts to be opened in London with debit cards included, in which one could freely exchange between crypto or currencies such as the dollar, the pound and the euro.
The truth is that Futswap is a company with registered offices in Sweden, Dubai, Estonia, the United Kingdom and El Salvador.
The first one appears on Stockholms Brevboxar street 597 116 74, which is a mailbox service.
The one in London, located at 19 Leyden Street,
is also a mailbox service.
It has no offices.
The two venues shown are always located in Dubai.
A large part of the content that is disseminated on social networks is generated there: Twitter.
According to its website and interviews given by its CEO, its business is financial intermediation: virtual payments, digital wallets, cryptocurrency exchanges to deposit different cryptocurrencies and pay in fiat currency (in the jargon they are the legal tender issued by each country). ).
The featured service is a debit card to pay with crypto.
To start using it, you must deposit about 100 euros.
It also offers its own cryptocurrency.
Clarín
contacted the company via email and social networks to find out what role Yrimia has in it.
They responded via Twitter to queries from this chronicler and from the Spanish journalist Juan Antonio Giménez, from Informacion.es (one of the media outlets that investigated the European ramifications of Cositorto's firm).
There they denied that Yrimia is part of the company.
They also stated that there were negotiations with Zoe, but no agreement was reached.
The former judge, in his videos, said that it was a concrete agreement.
Cositorto, in his statements before the court, also mentions working with a "Swedish bank."
One of the parties is lying.
Regarding his presence at the celebration, in Futswap they affirmed that he arrived at the event by an 'open invitation' that took place at a Crypto expo held on that date in Dubai.
The open party was held on a yacht, in the middle of the sea.
The response confirms that, indeed, it was he who was at the event.
Specifically, the company appears registered by Juan Guillermo Osorio Castro, a Colombian businessman also linked to Generación Zoe.
As published by Información.es, Osorio Castro was the founder of Just Do bet, an online casino that later passed on to the company Ballena Azul LTD.
Ballena Azul is a shell company created by Cositorto
and his number 2, Maximiliano Batista, in London, to develop a European leg that even included passes for soccer players.
Osorio Castro, 38, received a warning in Colombia from the Financial Superintendence of Colombia (SFC) —the equivalent of the National Securities Commission (CNV) of Argentina—, which intimidated him through resolution 0694 of 2020 not to offer products and/or services from the stock market since it was not enabled.
Osorio planned to give 26 seminars that year on how to operate in markets, according to local press reports.
Posting from a Zoe Generation satellite account, dated September 2021, announcing the deal between Zoe and Futswap.
The other members of the team come from fields other than finance.
Michel Steven Abad Rojas, for example, is a Futswap partner and a former model.
Arnold David Sierra Zambrano, Vice President, is a psychologist and artist.
Maria Lizeth Quiroz Ospina, the firm's assistant manager, was a dancer.
But one of the most interesting points of Futswap is the multiple links
with other ventures similar to Zoe
.
They are trading academies, digital cards, groups of seminarians, all of them offer Visa cards issued by the firm with legal headquarters in Sweden.
For example, there is eBank,
a self-described "decentralized digital bank
".
It belongs to the Ecuadorian coach Cristhian Bladimir Jumbo Angulo (30), creator of PipMaster Cía, a pyramid that offered returns in dollars of up to 8 percent per month without authorization from the regulatory body of his country.
He came to Justice and his leader was investigated.
It is estimated that he moved close to 41 million dollars.
The resolution of the Financial Superintendence of Colombia against Juan Guillermo Osorio Castro, owner of Futswap, for offering unauthorized services in his country
Or The Members Club (TMC), an educational community that teaches about coaching, leadership, finance, NFT through memberships between 50 and 500 dollars to belong.
It also offers investments in a pool of crypto assets with returns of up to 70 percent in four months.
Its founders were on the Futswap yacht.
dubai, mecca
It is an enclave besieged by the desert sands, it is populated by characters who live like pharaohs and it is full of pyramids.
It might be Egypt, but it's Dubai, the luxury megalopolis built on petrodollars that has become a new mecca for Ponzi-type schemes.
It is that in recent years
the cases of companies identified as alleged scams have multiplied
, whose leaders are erased for a while and reappear by uploading photos to Instagram with the Burj Al Arab in the background.
Others, however, choose the city of skyscrapers to open new ventures.
One of the first to raise the alarm was the Behind MLM site, a news portal that is in charge of
monitoring the different businesses that offer extraordinary returns based on allegedly fraudulent schemes.
In a note published in July 2021, they warned that the city had become the "world capital" of multilevel scams, a growth that occurred alongside the Covid-19 pandemic.
Burj Khalifa, emblem of Dubai.
(REUTERS/Mohammed Salem/File Photo)
Although the city is synonymous with ostentation, business and money, its laxity in certain regulatory aspects make it a point of interest.
One of the most important is the
lack of extradition treaties
with most Western countries.
Just with Australia, China, France, Spain, the United Kingdom or India, and some with Muslim roots.
No country on the American continent.
In 2020, for example, the organization Transparency International (which annually ranks corruption) warned that "the authorities are not cooperating with international partners."
"This could make the Emirates an attractive place where
'criminals could operate, keep their illegal profits
or use it as a safe haven,' they said. This makes it not just fraudsters, but also 'corrupt political elites'." or "mafia groups".
But with regard to pyramid schemes, in recent years it has received different 'entrepreneurs' who come to reinvest.
This week, the Argentine CNV issued an alert against the Goarbit firm and its representative, a Dominican named Máximo Martínez, for offering intermediation services without being authorized.
In its networks it offered returns of up to 1.5 percent in dollars but per day.
In a note with TN, Hector Luis Yrimia confirmed that he is living in Dubai.
Photo: Video Capture
Although it is still active, a few months ago it moved to Dubai and began operating under the new name GoFintech first and GoArbit 3.0 later.
Their social networks in recent months have been populated with posts where they say that they are authorized, that they want to turn them around and that their clients are moving to a new platform called SuiteGo to continue paying.
But the cases are repeated.
The Xifra firm, owned by a businessman named Sifuentes, operated in Mexico and offered returns of up to 200%.
One of its leaders was arrested for that case (although later released).
It became Decentra in May 2022 and reopened, offering only training for a monthly fee.
Its holder also went to Dubai.
In November 2022, German Stephan Morgenstern was detained by Interpol at Athens airport while trying to board a flight to Dubai.
He is accused of the FutureNet fraud, a Ponzi that defrauded victims in South Korea and several European countries out of $29 million.
In Spain there is the case of Kuailian (20% returns in euros per month, based in Estonia), which collapsed in May of last year.
David Ruiz de León and Cristian Albeiro, those responsible, were in Dubai.
One of them did manage to be arrested and the case is advancing, according to El Periódico de España.
Arbistar 2.0 (8-15% profitability per month in dollars) by Santiago Fuentes also emerged from that country.
The tour was similar.
The curiosity, according to the newspaper La Vanguardia, is that when the company was about to fall in September 2020, its CEO denied the accusations of being a Ponzi and said that if they had wanted to leave with the money, "they would already be in Dubai"
.
Justice investigates them in that country.
Omega Pro, another of the firms indicated as alleged Ponzi
(The CMV issued an alert in March 2022), even has an office in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world and emblem of the city.
IM Mastery Academy, called in some places a "crypto cult", also regularly hosts meetings in the United Arab Emirates.
But beyond the lax controls, there is another point that makes Dubai a mecca and that is ostentation.
It
is an extremely expensive city
, where luxury cars are the norm, as are high-end watches, luxury beaches.
Only successful entrepreneurs can live there.
A photo for Instagram there sells guarantee and confidence.
It also helps to sell the mother of Ponzi promises, the certainty that "
if I could, you can too
."
Give me your money and I'll show you how.
EMJ
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