Guardia Civil says Arbistar-linked wallets moved over 20,000 Bitcoin after collapse

Key points

• Arbistar froze investor accounts in September 2020 after promising about 28% weekly returns from trading bots.
• The Guardia Civil says roughly 881 Bitcoin was moved to external wallets as the platform collapsed.
• Founder Santiago Fuentes Jover was jailed for 16 years and partner Diego Fernández Nojarova for 11 years.

Spanish investigators have found that wallets linked to the alleged Arbistar Ponzi scheme moved more than 20,000 Bitcoin after the platform collapsed, Bitcoin.com News reports, citing a Guardia Civil report covered by Teneriffa News. The transfers took place between January and March 2021 and were worth over $1.1bn at Bitcoin's price on 31 March 2021.

Arbistar, run by parent company Arbicorp from southern Tenerife, froze investor accounts in September 2020, blaming a failure in its automated trading bots. It had promised weekly returns of around 28% and drew in victims across 30 Spanish provinces as well as Mexico, Venezuela, France and Andorra. Authorities later classified it as a pyramid scheme affecting up to 32,000 investors, with damages put at $111m to more than $220m.

According to the Guardia Civil, about 881 Bitcoin was moved into external wallets as the platform collapsed in September 2020. Investigators say the later flows went to people in the administrators' inner circle with no legitimate operational basis, pointing to an effort to conceal assets. Spanish prosecutors said in 2020 that roughly $1bn of investor funds was unaccounted for.

Criminal proceedings have already dealt with the leadership. Several people are named in the continuing money-laundering probe.

What to watch: Spanish authorities are continuing their money-laundering investigation to trace the full cryptocurrency network tied to the defunct Tenerife firm.

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