Arbistar was a cryptocurrency investment software that closed in September 2020.

The case has at least 32,000 victims and total losses of at least 41 million euros.

The Arbistar case, which has been going on for a year since the first investigations got started by the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office, has had new developments in the judicial sector.

The judge of the National Court, José Luis Calama, gathered the accusations of the 5,900 affected by an alleged Ponzi scheme. This gathering implies that several lawyers will defend the group of people in the same circumstances.

Arbistar got considered by the media as the most controversial cryptocurrency scam in the European country. There is a millionaire fraud of more than 30,000 people by the investment bot that closed its operations in September of last year.

An investment bot is a software that allows automating investment strategies to achieve returns. In this case, the program invested in cryptocurrencies and promised users profits around 15%, depending on the chosen plan.

Calama’s decision to bring together all those affected in the case so far in 10 accusations is based precisely on the high peak of this figure. The lawyers in charge of the case got chosen according to the number of victims they represented and the amount of economic damage inflicted.

As published by the Spanish media La Información, the judge’s decision details that the economic damage would circle at least 41 million euros, but could be an even higher amount.

Likewise, as reported by this media, the magistrate detailed that there are affected citizens from 30 of the 50 provinces of Spain.

Last July, Judge Calama had decided to split the Arbistar case into two parts. On the one hand, the commission of crimes of aggravated fraud and criminal organizations would get investigated. On the other hand, the focus would be on extra illicit activities such as money laundering and document falsification.

What Does Arbistar Argue?

The main defendant in the case is Santiago Fuentes, CEO of Arbistar. He clarified that Justice investigates a Ponzi scheme that got used to attract investments and replace the money received only through the inclusion of more people to the Ponzi scheme. Instead of doing it through the returns of the investments made.

Fuentes assured that his company did not commit any illegal activity. Fuentes also said that the firm was organizing the deadlines to return the funds to the injured parties.

Regarding the losses of its users, Arbistar revealed that it happened due to a configuration error in the bot that caused excessive profits to get distributed.

In this way, the company had a deficit that it could not solve, and thus the Arbicorp parent company moved to close the service, leaving many of its more than 100,000 users with losses that they have not yet been able to recover.

By: Jenson Nuñez

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