Gold, boats, luxury cars and 29 million abroad: the judge closes on the entrepreneur who financed Alvise | Spain

Álvaro Romillo Castillo, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur who claimed to have handed over 100,000 euros to MEP and Se Fino La Fiesta (SALF) leader Luis Pérez, alvisefor the June 2024 elections, he declared this Friday to the National Court after the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Guardia Civil arrested him on Thursday due to the risk of flight. Judge José Luis Calama is investigating whether Romillo headed a criminal organization that defrauded more than 3,000 people through a platform that offered to invest in gold, boats, cars and other luxury goods in exchange for unrealistic returns. The structure has disappeared and the investigations, which have detected movements of up to 29 million euros abroad, are trying to verify whether Romillo would have kept the assets.

Since September 2024, the National Court has been investigating the activity of the Madeira Invest Club (MIC), a self-proclaimed “private investment club” considered a financial chiringuito by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), then bankrupt and directed by Romillo – also known as Cryptospain OR Luis Crypto-, but only this week the judge deemed the entrepreneur’s risk of flight credible and ordered his arrest. The armed institute accuses him of being behind a macropyramid Ponzi scheme with which he earned more than 260 million euros. In recent months, while the summary remained secret, the UCO revealed a complex network of shell companies and bank accounts spread across Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Albania, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Singapore, Belgium, Thailand and Hong Kong.

According to the documentation to which EL PAÍS had access, Romillo “was fully aware” that the platform he managed was not authorized to provide investment services and, therefore, “took several measures to maintain the deception”. He took advantage of his influence on social networks to attract customers who brought their savings with the promise of investing them in what he called “works” and which he presented as exclusive assets that could generate “minimum returns of 20% per year” for the victims. “Participation for everyone worksite “It involved the acquisition of a digital file in JPG format, described as a digital work contractually linked to the investor through a sales document, the repurchase of which by the MIC was guaranteed, once a pre-established period had passed, with a fixed and assured percentage of profit”, explains the Guardia Civil in its latest report.

To attract investors, Romillo developed an intense promotion and recruitment activity through digital media and social networks in which he emphasized “the idea of ​​exclusivity, high profitability, repeatedly using deadlines or very tight deadlines and presenting an appearance of professionalism and financial solvency. All of this, promoted through mass events, with the collaboration of people of public notoriety and with in-person inaugurations”, continue the agents, who recall that Alvise participated in one of these events.

THE works that the Madeira Invest Club has grabbed as bait leaves every collector speechless: watches worth 14 million euros (from the luxury brands Rolex and Patek Philippe, among others); gold coins with a value exceeding 800,000 euros; more than 1.3 million in cryptocurrencies; ships worth 6 million (i Alter ego, 30.87 meters long seized in Portugal; Him joker, with 34.10 meters which was found in Miami; and a pentamotor located in the Dominican Republic), vehicles for another 14.5 million (Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley and Alfa Romeo, among other brands); and a long etc.

The National Police had already completed the so-called Operation Bentley in July, which led to the seizure of several luxury cars that Romillo allegedly took from a dealership he had in Madrid (and which was also part of the investments offered to the victims) and had moved to Seville to hide them. In its report, the Police speaks of a “massive departure” of vehicles with the aim of hiding their assets.

Legal sources explain that researchers work with the thesis that Cryptospain It gradually decapitalized the investment platform to retain the money. Furthermore, Judge Calama sent to the Plaza de Castilla court all the evidence that suggests a crime of confiscation of assets because in recent months the entrepreneur has put all his companies up for sale in the name of people around him. “It’s a family clan,” sources say. In the National Court he is accused of criminal organisation, money laundering and fraud. Only the latter can be punished with a prison sentence of up to 18 years “if it is considered a mass crime”, Judge Calama indicates in the arrest warrant.

The allegations also raised suspicions about the robbery Romillo said he suffered at his home in San Sebastián de los Reyes in late August. He reported that masked attackers had entered at gunpoint on the night he arrived from a trip from Ibiza and managed to steal 36 watches worth €650,000 and two million euros in cryptocurrencies. According to the complaint he subsequently filed, the video surveillance cameras in the house were not activated. Some legal sources suggest that this could be a simulation to continue getting rid of the allegedly scammed money and assets. The judge of the National Court asked the Alcobendas court investigating the robbery to send him the police reports attached to the case.

29 million euros

The analysis of Romillo’s bank accounts was crucial in determining his arrest. The UCO highlights the “shortage of banknotes linked to the entrepreneur’s personal accounts” in the period in which the investment platform carried out its most intense activity. “The credits, expenses and balances of his bank accounts would not correspond to the level of business he conducts and the high lifestyle he publicly displays,” the agents indicate in their latest report, dated last Wednesday. “This disproportion between the limited financial activity and the economic magnitude of the project he directed constitutes a relevant indication of concealment of assets and diversion of funds through third parties, intermediary companies, foreign jurisdictions or through the use of crypto-assets,” the police report concludes.

Investigators point to a Portuguese company called Sabrosso LDA as a key player in this alleged cover-up. It allegedly included money from damaged investors. At the same time, Romillo and his associates would have extracted it through wire transfers destined for bank deposits abroad. The UCO identified an account in Singapore in the name of a Hong Kong company that received more than 29 million, which “unequivocally demonstrates the existence of money diversion”. International cooperation with other countries made it possible to block that account, the balance of which is currently unknown.