Intense Live : The fall in Argentina of Intense Live, the business that offered to invest in cars and bitcoins and was a pyramid scam

Intense Live tried to write his name in gold letters. It was an idea, more than a company: there is no company name registered with that name in all of Argentina. Offered an extremely interesting business for the small saver: being part of a new car travel application, a “collaborative investment” with a “certified contract” according to its website for “crowdfunding in private transport”. “Intense Live buys vehicles”, says a pamphlet, which are then equipped with GPS and security cameras. Namely, He doesn’t even hire the drivers with cars anymore, the dream of your own fleet.

It sounded great: anyone with a little to invest became part of an extremely lucrative business. “The road to success begins with taking the first step. Take the risk to undertake! ”, Said another salesman of the system, with a somewhat silly phrase of the capitalism of the will, which invited to be a “Digital entrepreneur”.

The promises of return were colossal, unusual: more than 20 percent monthly minimum.

Its offices, according to its website, were scattered in the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and Argentina, where it spread through the province of Buenos Aires, from points like Catamarca and Tucumán. According to testimonies, the contribution to enter was in cryptocurrencies, 300 dollars in bitcoins. Their operators took to Instagram to announce their success, as if they were door-to-door cosmetic sellers, disguised as cryptocurrency traders, putting on a successful face on their profile picture. “You invest once and you get 12”, said one of them from Ramallo. The payment of the winnings, better still, could be done in bitcoins.

It wasn’t just about Instagram: The brand’s Telegram groups also functioned as a recruiting node.

Many sellers up they had printed brochures, chinstraps with phone numbers. In the end, for Justice, it would be all a hoax, a Ponzi scheme built on the ruin of possible victims. This week, an Argentine branch of Intense Live fell in San Nicolás, province of Buenos Aires, after a complaint that launched a federal file that is just beginning.

This week, the Anti-Fraud Investigation Division of the Federal Police raided a series of departments and offices linked to eight men from San Nicolás after a complaint received by PROCELAC, the wing of the Procuratorate that investigates financial crimes, which detailed that the modality was already beginning its first ravages in Catamarca and, precisely, in San Nicolás.

There, the federal prosecutor Matías Di Lello initiated a file for article 310 of the Penal Code, illegal capture of savings. Eight men between 45 and 35 years old, some of them linked to the insurance market, were raided by PFA, after carrying out intelligence tasks, with a file that included wiretapping. They kidnapped dollars and brochures in the offices of San Nicolás, in addition to cell phones and computers.

“It is an international move, designed from the outside. The cause has just begun ”, ensures a key voice on the record.

The similarities with the Hope Funds case, today brought to trial, designated as the largest scam in Argentine historyare obvious: contagion and uptake occur from person to person, from family and friends.

However, there is a key difference. Hope Funds died taking the money of its victims, leaving a remarkable accounting corpse of registered companies and documents at the national level.l, with offshore companies included. There was a figure that united everything, its president, Enrique Blaksley, who stood up for the undertaking and ended up as the main defendant in a case for laundering and fraud whose damage caused It is estimated at more than 1,500 million pesos at the value of 2017.

Locally, Intense Live seems more elusive. The trademark “Intense Live” does not appear among the records of the National Institute of Intellectual Property. An app with that name is not even listed in the Google Play Store. Your central website offers addresses throughout Latin America, but not in Argentina.