“Who is Latino who would like to become a millionaire?”
That is how Mauricio Chavez introduces himself to a room full of people, including a group from Chicago, at a meeting in Houston which was posted on YouTube last August.
Chavez is the CEO of a company called CryptoFX, which in recent years has solicited money from people in Latino communities to invest in crypto currency in return for potential riches. “We already have more than 20 people becoming millionaires,” Chavez tells his audience in the video. “Over five thousand people …. literally mak[ing] over $500,000 …. And there are many, many, many, many – literally paying off all their debts.”
That video is now an exhibit in a lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last September, accusing CryptoFX of operating as “a Ponzi scheme” which – according to a court-appointed receiver — has defrauded as many as 40,000 people out of $150 million or more.
The court case alleges that Chavez and his partner Giorgio Benvenuto have been “targeting the Latino community” to raise millions of dollars from people who thought their money would be invested in digital currency. Instead, the suit says, “the vast majority of investor funds …. went to purposes unrelated to crypto asset investments, including real estate … personal spending, and to make Ponzi payments.” The SEC suit says Chavez and his company took in money from “unsophisticated…
