According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, the Civil Guard in Madrid detained a man accused of running an international scheme worth €260 M. The suspect, 42-year-old Álvaro Romillo Castillo, known online as CryptoSpain, was the head of Madeira Invest Club, launched in early 2023.
The club was promoted as a private investment community offering returns of up to 12% per month through contracts tied to cryptocurrencies, gold, real estate, collectible whiskey, and digital art.
More than 3,000 people from regions across the EU and Latin America were involved. The fraudster attracted participants through social media, promising guaranteed buybacks of invested assets. Some victims reportedly lost more than €1 M. Posts on X described him as one of the biggest scammers in Spain’s history.
Investigators found that payouts to investors were made using new deposits and that the company had no legitimate business operations. Through a network of shell entities, funds were transferred via accounts in Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
The police operation, codenamed PONEI, was conducted with support from Europol and law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. During the raids, officers seized documents, servers, and digital wallets used to manage the fraudulent network.
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