New million dollar pyramid scam with cryptocurrencies

Days ago the first case of fiscal fraud en EE.UU. con Bitcoins, but again today financial operations with cryptocurrencies are once again in the crosshairs of justice.

After four retail investors took legal action, it became known today that Buda.com Y Terra Finance will be investigated for possible crimes of fraud by nearly $ 177 million in damages.

The group of affected represented by the Kehr Abuid law firm filed a civil lawsuit in September with the Vitacura Local Police Court and a criminal complaint in the 4th Guarantee Court of Santiago.

According to the information presented to the court, the case began when one of those affected, Felipe Pineda, started investing in crypto assets two years ago with Orionx. Then, he looked for other exchanges and ended up with the firm Terra Finance. On this platform he created a profile in December 2019 and was contacted by Marco Hidalgo, an executive of Terra Finance who told him that I had to create an account on Buda.com.

Once the deposits have been made in a checking account that Buda.com has in Itau bank, the money it was transformed into a crypto currency and this was provided to Terra Finance. Observing that the returns were growing, Pineda told Luis Morales, Diarny Inllum and Pedro Henríquez about the business opportunities.

The fraud

The problem was known when Pineda decided to do a withdrawal of funds, and from Terra Finance “they ask you to invest more money in order to ‘legalize them‘, to finally disappear with the total sum of money obtained, without leaving a trace“.

The last contact they had was between May 25 and 28. The four people allege that they were harmed in a total of $ 177,865,000.

According to the information in the lawsuits, Terra Finance is a shell company and the lawyers of those affected blame Buda.com “Because they were aware that these people were operating within their site, that several reports of fraud were generated and they did not take any protection measures for consumers who invested in their platform knowing this.”

According to the evidence provided, Buda.com stated that they have “received more complaints from users who apparently have been deceived by this same company that eventually could be a pyramid scam, but unfortunately we do not have a way to prevent users from making transactions with them“.

Is there a relationship between the companies?

On the other hand, the legal manager of the Buda.com, Samuel Cañas, assured the newspaper Diario Financiero that the company has no relationship with Terra Finance.

But in addition, Cañas explained that: “we provided all the available information to support the investigation. In addition, all the information was delivered to the PDI through a complete written report.”

Regarding legal actions, detailed that: “apparently it would be an international pyramid scam called Terra Finance, it is something that of course the affected people have to carry out, and we will continue to provide support, because we believe that these types of events affect trust in everything the ecosistema FinTech“.

“Users voluntarily bought cryptocurrencies on Buda.com, and later they decided to send them to a third party that has no relationship with Buda.com, and who would then have disappeared without returning the cryptocurrencies to those affected,” he concluded. He published the site Diario Financiero.