How the alleged Ponzi scheme of a crypto that promises returns in dollars works

In the Buenos Aires town of San Pedro, located 170 kilometers from the City of Buenos Aires and with 70,000 inhabitants, the alert for a possible pyramid scam from a company that is not registered and does not have any legal endorsement.

They warn that Rainbowex, cryptocurrency that promises a return in dollars and double the capital invested in a period of just 45 days, works with a ponzi scheme in which around 12,000 residents would have fallen who invested their savings in the platform, motivated by local promoters who encourage the recruitment of new users.

It is the “trading” system which consists of buying a virtual currency, supposedly pay between 1% and 2% in just one day. That performance, which no other crypto offers today, made the proposal gain relevance in recent weeks, in a context in which The yields of different investment instruments fell due to the effect of lower inflation and money laundering.

Behind Rainbowex is Knight Consortium an entity that presents itself as a foundation made up of a group of shareholders that operates in the stock market and attracts retail investors from different parts of the world.

Nightly, An Asian woman known as “La China” gives signals so that people can buy and sell crypto. The programmer and teacher Maximiliano Firmman He referred to the character on social network X, where he published: “When I went to Saudi Arabia, one striking thing was the 15-minute holiday several times a day (for prayer). In San Pedro it is a holiday when ‘China’ sends ‘signs’“In factories they stop, in party halls it is announced over a loudspeaker and at friends’ games they break.”

“San Pedro is a city where The main activities used to be agriculture and tourism. Today the main activity It turned out to be a Ponzi scam in which everyone believes they are doing crypto trading. The stories are incredible. They are all involved. The fall is going to be very hard,” he anticipated.

“They make everyone believe that they are buying or selling a crypto and making 1%-2% daily profits. It is an APK installed outside the store, they are all non-existent crypto falopas, it is all simulation, but everyone is crazy believing that they are the Wolves of Wall Street,” he noted, in relation to the possible scam and the fact that the app does not It can be downloaded neither in the Play Store nor the App Store.

On September 21, the company made a presentation at the Emperador hotel where those who claim to be Knight Consortium executives attended and prizes were distributed to users. Hours later, it was found that one of them was a Polish actor. It’s Maurycy Lyczkowho assured that he was hired by an Asian person who brought him to the country. They would have paid him US$1,500, with prior preparation that would have included the delivery of a script and an essay.

The general prosecutor’s office of San Nicolás, a department of which San Pedro is part, began an investigation together with a team specialized in cybercrime to verify if the incident can be framed in a violation of article 310 of the Penal Code where Financial intermediation is penalized without correct registration within the National Securities Commission (CNV).

After the case came to light, the mayor of San Pedro, Cecilio Salazar broke the silence and noted that “everyone knew that some played, but not to the magnitude of these last months”. He clarified that, although there are still no complaints before the Justice, “it is a complex and worrying issue, in which every day there are people who are joining in,” and he estimated that There are between 15,000 and 20,000 people involved.