The main suspects even organized events to promote their crimes.
Argentina is trying to locate those involved to begin extradition procedures and try them.
This December 10, the Argentine Justice Department activated an international alert to arrest two suspects in a cryptocurrency scam. This left hundreds of victims in San Pedro, a city in the province of Buenos Aires. The measure was taken a year after the prosecution managed to track and freeze more than 3.5 million dollars (USD) linked to the fraud.
The request was formalized before Interpol by Buenos Aires prosecutors María del Valle Viviani and Verónica Marcantonio, who They identified the suspects as Deliang Chong and Pang Siew Li30 and 35 years old, both from Malaysia. An arrest warrant was issued by the Guarantee Court No. 1 of San Nicolás, which confirmed that the accused left the country.
The case came to light after complaints from residents of San Pedro, who invested money following the instructions of an alleged advisor known as “La China Ali.” They claim that the deposits – in pesos, dollars or digital assets – were sent to a platform called RainbowEx, which showed fictitious cryptocurrency purchase and sale operations. The organization diverted the money to its own accounts.
Before leaving Argentina, the suspects organized an event at the Emperador Hotel in Buenos Aires to promote their operation. This was organized by a company linked to them, ALPHA BASH PLT, with a registered address in Kuala Lumpur (Capital of Malaysia).
To reinforce the appearance of professionalism, they hired foreign actors, including Poles Filip Walcerz and Maurycy Beniamin Lyczko. These posed as cryptocurrency specialists.
International operation: servers, emails and legal contacts
During the investigation, it was discovered that RainbowEx’s infrastructure was hosted on Alibaba Cloud servers in Singapore and that the emails used by the operators came from providers linked to China. In addition, attempts were detected to recover the funds frozen by the prosecution through email addresses created from Hong Kong and used from Laos.
According to local sources, a Chinese law firm is contact with the Buenos Aires Attorney General’s Office to request information about the blocking of cryptocurrencies. Part of the blocked funds still cannot be recovered, since the access keys to the digital wallets are necessary to do so.
Migrations recorded that Chong and Pang entered the country in the weeks prior to the event in Buenos Aires. Shortly after, they left for Türkiye. From there they would have resumed their route to Asia.
With the Interpol alerts already activated, Argentina will seek to locate them in Asian territory to advance with the extradition procedures and take the case to trial.
This case occurs in the midst of an increase in inspection of the ecosystem in the southern country. In July, CriptoNoticias reported that the National Securities Commission (CNV) filed a criminal complaint against Atómico 3 SA, a virtual asset service provider (PSAV) for suspected fraud linked to a lithium mining tokenization project in the province of San Juan.