Hundreds of Spanish investors have filed a class-action lawsuit before the country’s National Court over an allegedly crypto scam. The defendant reportedly defrauded up to 250 million euros from investors by running a scheme that involved Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC).
The class-action lawsuit was filed against Javier Biosca, according to Bitcoin.com. In the suit, over 300 small crypto investors across Spain claimed that Rodriguez scammed over 250 million euros or around $298 million in cryptocurrencies.
The crypto scam victims came from a wide variety of backgrounds. The investors include retirees, domestic employees, lawyers, a judge, notaries, small business owners, tax inspectors and some are unemployed.
Emilia Zaballos, the lawyer representing the victims, said that while the lawsuit was filed on March 17, 2021, it wasn’t disclosed to the public “until the deadline for submitting contracts and other documents provided by small investors, in general, has ended.”
While the number of investors she represented is about 300 at the moment, Zaballos said that “the number grows day by day,” according to local publication El Pais. The amount involved in the scam might even go beyond previous estimates.
The lawsuit mentioned that the damages due to the crypto scam at around 250 million euros or $298 million. However, Zaballos noted that “it may exceed 3,000 million euros, depending on the prices that these virtual currencies reach.” This means that damages could reach up to $3.58 billion.
Biosca started his scheme by offering weekly earnings of between 20 and 25 percent to his clients, which were initially his neighbors, for their investments in cryptos composed mainly of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC), according to the complaint. Biosca was in charge of buying and selling the digital assets on behalf of his clients.
With clients initially receiving the amount promised, Biosca’s operation and client base soon expanded by word of mouth attracted more investors. However, Biosca started reducing the interest rates to 10 percent and it even lowered to 8 percent by January 2020. However, he abruptly stopped paying his clients by November 2020 and disappeared.
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