After almost two years of investigation,
the Villa María justice system brought to trial this Wednesday the mega-case investigating the alleged Ponzi scam behind the Generación Zoe emporium
, the business holding company led by coach Leonardo Cositorto, which offered everything from cryptocurrencies to hamburgers and It promised its investors suspiciously exorbitant profits in dollars.
Cositorto, in preventive detention for more than 22 months in the Bouwer prison, in Córdoba, is
one of the 26 defendants
who appear in the investigation led by prosecutor Juliana Companys of Villa María, who traced the responsibility of each of the responsible for the scheme, which had one of its most important and lucrative headquarters in that city.
Cositorto is accused of co-author of the crimes of illicit association as the organizing leader and of repeated scams.
The request for trial is for some 173 incidents involving 76 victims in Villa María alone, which total almost
8.5 million pesos and US$ 449,799 dollars
.
However, to this initial request, more events must be added in other locations such as San Francisco, Villa Carlos Paz or Córdoba Capital, which are still under investigation and amount to almost 600 scammed people.
But Generation Zoe, which began in Colombia and expanded throughout Latin America, left victims in Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, the United States, Spain and even Australia.
According to at least two witnesses testifying before the Cordoban justice system, the company would have moved close to
120 million dollars globally,
although the number may be even higher.
Also accused in the case are Maximiliano Batista, vice president of the company;
Miguel Ángel Echegaray, a former Neuquén official who was listed as treasurer;
provincial leaders Claudio Álvarez, Silvana Abellonio and Silvia Fermani (who went from managing a photocopier to owning several properties and high-end cars);
and the accountants Norman Próspero, Julieta Sciutti and Maximiliano Mitroff.
The latter, according to justice, were part of an operation that sought to give legitimacy to a scheme that they themselves evaluated as a possible internal Ponzi.
According to
judicial
sources, the trial could take place this year.
Due to the sum of the facts, the sentence for the ringleaders could exceed 20 years in prison.
Maximiliano Batista, vice president of Generación Zoe, together with Leonardo Cositorto.
The court also mentions the two fugitives in the case.
One of them is the
enigmatic trader Rosa María González Rincón
, who swore she had developed an algorithm with "quantum" technology that allowed her to predict where the market was going and always beat it, a story that Cositorto himself bought and then resold to his followers.
The other is former national judge Héctor Luis Yrimia
, who was the legal director of Generación Zoe.
Yrimia, who was involved in the AMIA case and was identified by Alberto Nisman as a piece in the Iranian cover-up plan, was the head of the attempt to give a legal whitewash to Cositorto's businesses.
When everything began to falter, he left for Dubai never to return.
Of course, he was seen in a couple of videos on social networks at the end of 2022, dancing on a yacht at the luxurious party of a crypto firm, as reported by Clarín.
Millionaire lives, grocery receipts and toy investments: how Generation Zoe's deception worked
The prosecution's hypothesis is that Generation Zoe was an illicit association and a masked scam through a series of staging designed to extract money from investors.
"They hardly even pretended, they described it to you and it was a Ponzi
," commented a judicial source.
The firm offered a deposit of US$500, from which they could access education plans but which also generated returns in dollars starting at 7.5 percent per month.
Then they began to offer other products such as pins, memberships and other names that promised to multiply returns even more if more money was invested.
The offices of Generación Zoe, in Villa María.
At the highest level, for example, was the Billionaire Pin, which was worth 150 thousand dollars.
Of course, it promised a return of $1,000 a day for four years, plane trips for life and a percentage of the company's turnover that could reach up to 10 percent.
Justice maintains that the scam was based on seven stagings
: the mask of the educational paw, a trust that Yrimia wanted to carry out to give it an appearance of legality;
the purchase of a company that can operate on the stock market (An ALYC that ultimately never worked);
or the unusual purchase of a gold mine to support the project of its own cryptocurrency, something prohibited by Argentine law.
One of the points where the prosecution puts its finger is Trading operations.
According to what he was able to gather throughout the investigation, Zoe never carried out purchase and sale operations of financial assets that could justify the extraordinary returns that were promised to savers.
It is something that even the traders who worked in the company affirm: they say that most of the time they operated with "demo" accounts, that is, toy accounts, which were used to learn without risking capital.
The times they did it with real money,
most ended up losing everything.
At Zoe there was no control over money.
As was learned from the wiretaps and witness statements, anyone could enter the amounts into the system that recorded how much she invested and how much each person should earn.
The control was so precarious that one of the members said that
investors were given "a greengrocer's receipt."
At the end of December, when the firm was more oiled but suspicions were beginning,
it moved between 50 and 100 thousand dollars a day
.
On the last day of 2021, it raised $2 million with the so-called Christmas Bot, a desperate promotion they launched to tempt savers at a time when the entire scheme was faltering.
"None of that was billed," says a witness.
Justice also focused on the enrichment that the members of the organization had: For example, it highlights the purchase of a home in Villa Gesell, for which Cositorto paid 80 thousand dollars together with the son of his private secretary, a 19-year-old boy. no declared income.
Also a complex of cabins in Cosquín, three houses and four lots in Villa María, two apartments in Buenos Aires, all in the names of the different leaders.
There are 12 cars, including four BMWs, five trucks and a Mercedes Benz.
Claudio Álvarez, head of the Generación Zoe offices in Córdoba and Santa Fe
This life of luxury also worked as a bait for investors.
The leaders of the organization (justice maintains) showed that abundance as proof that Zoe's method could make anyone a millionaire, just as it had happened to them.
To do this, it was necessary to join the company and learn with them.
According to what they point out, the other key point is that the entire structure was designed for fraud and
had no financial support to bank the returns
.
This would destroy the defense's argument, which states that there was a breach of contract caused by a run on savers who left the company when the complaints began.
The other causes
Other similar files in Goya (Corrientes), Rosario (Santa Fe), Buenos Aires and Salta must be added to the Córdoba case.
In addition, there is another investigation into money laundering being carried out by Ariel Lijo's prosecutor's office.
However, none made much progress.
In Buenos Aires, where the central offices operated and the movement was much greater, the investigation was bogged down in a jumble of jurisdictions between the federal jurisdiction and the court, which has blocked the case for two years.
But Zoe's scheme also has investigations abroad, which did begin to move.
In Spain, for example, justice is advancing on the role of the brothers Daniel and Camilo Paterna
, who were responsible for a branch that the firm had in the Alicante area.
There are about 200 victims there who lost more than 4 million euros.
Cositorto, who appears as a leader in the investigation, could be called to testify, although the process has not begun.
Cositorto, detained, on his transfer to Buenos Aires.
According to an investigation by journalist Juan Antonio Giménez, who followed the Spanish branch of the scheme from the beginning, justice is behind four transfers to Italy, Andorra, the United Kingdom and Estonia, which total almost 1.6 million euros and would have served to hide the capital.
All of them occurred once judicial investigations began in Latin America.
Daniel Paterna, for his part, announced on his social networks that he considers himself another victim
and that he plans to launch a book telling his version of the events.
His idea is that the proceeds from "Yo courage" (the name with which he baptized his autobiography) be allocated to "the victims" of Zoe's fall in Spain.
In Colombia, meanwhile, some 6,000 victims are putting pressure on the justice system to move forward against the two local leaders, Rooger Ramírez and James Spencer.
They claim that Cositorto took all the country's money to pay the debts that were generated in Argentina when the company fell.
And that's why they don't have money.
Hours before the request to go to trial became known, Cositorto spoke in a radio column that he has every week on Radio El Mundo, where he gives his opinion on politics and protests against what he considers "an orchestrated attack" against his company.
There he shot against his lawyers, against justice, against his former partner Yrimia and again stressed that they were "envious" of his company.
"We were somewhat disruptive
," he defended himself.