Tens of complaints have already been presented in Santa Cruz of Tenerife by a alleged scam in the company Tradex Asset Management for the money management to invest in the stock market in exchange for one high profitability in a very short time. In some cases, the promise of benefits was 50% in two monthsthough also there are documents in which it was offered 30%.
In addition, the contracted worker and self-employed collaborators of said firm show their disagreement with the attitude of ownersince he owes them several months of wages. Some lawyers consulted explain that, in principle and in the absence of the investigation of the National Police thus ratifies it, the first complaints point to the fact that Presumably it is a pyramid scam. If this hypothesis is confirmed, the hook to raise money is in the investors’ greedwanting to earn considerable profits in a few months.
Some people who consider themselves scammed by the responsible from tradex, MDthey went to criminal lawyer Javier Santana. According to the testimonies collected by this lawyer, said firm captured various sums of money and managed them with supposed investments that were going to generate a high return, “50% in two months.” The lawyer Isaac Francisco Pérez, of the Sirvent&Granados office Lawyers, estimated that the scam can reach 4,000,000 euros.
Based on the characteristics of the case, the Economic and Financial Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police initiated the steps to determine if there has been a crime or not in the way of acting of Tradex. This implies analyzing, one by one, the dozens of complaints filed, based on the documentation presented.
The procedure in these cases is that the first investors make contributions of money and achieve (or are made to see that they obtain) the promised benefits. From there, citizens can withdraw those amounts or reinvest to multiply profits. For example, if a person contributes 10,000 euros, in two months he already has 15,000. And many victims “get hooked”, do not withdraw the amount and want to increase the benefit. This supposed “efficiency” is spread among family members, friends or acquaintances, who end up promoting the pyramid scheme. If with the initial clients it is possible to comply, at least in appearance, the opposite happens with those who come at the end of the process.
Based on the information held by the lawyer Javier Santana García, this way of operating presumably continued until last week. This lawyer had received until this Wednesday, July 27, several complaints, which he plans to present before the Court of Duty in the capital of Tenerife. In Santana’s opinion, “that profitability is not viable in such a short period of time and in such a massive way.” In his case, those affected whom he represents made contributions of 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 euros in Tradex. This does not appear in the business registry, since it is only a commercial signature of the natural person who controlled it.
The alarms for the alleged scam jumped last Friday at the company’s headquarters. The Tradex employee and collaborators warned that there could allegedly be a scam to customers. And, in addition, they are owed between two and three months of remuneration. For this reason, they began to ask for explanations from MD, executive director and founder of the firm, and he “gives them away” again and again. The self-employed collaborators, who are commission agents of the operations, begin to have suspicions that “something strange is going on,” explains the lawyer Isaac Pérez Pérez.
These people are the ones who supposedly come to the conclusion that the account to which the client’s income should go “was empty, that there was nothing,” says a source. This lawyer adds that, the next day, “they could no longer locate him.”
Lawyer Isaac Pérez: “There may be between 600 and 1,000 affected”
Until noon this Wednesday 54 complaints from clients had been filed in the Sirvent&Granados Lawyers office So far they haven’t been able to get their money back. According to Isaac Pérez’s estimates, the volume of the scam can be around four million euros and those affected can be “hundreds, between 600 and 1,000”.
“We recommend that our clients go to report to the National Police,” says the lawyer. A logical requirement in the complaint is that each injured party provide the investment contract with Tradex. Pérez says that all those affected were attracted by “spectacular returns on capital, which were not real.” Based on data obtained by said law firm, at first the minimum investment was 5,000 euros, but in the end the contribution could not be less than 20,000 euros. But, according to the lawyer, in a complaint the delivery of 500,000 euros is recorded.
In his opinion, the profile of those affected is very varied, from employed workers to liberal professionals, freelancers or entrepreneurs. That is, people who decide to invest their savings. And “the vast majority are from Tenerife,” says Pérez.
For this lawyer, “moving 4,000,000 euros is not easy, nor is it prepared from one day to the next, especially with the controls that exist to prevent money laundering.” The first complaints were filed with the National Police last Friday afternoon. UDEF investigators will call each victim to offer their testimony and documentation proving that a scam allegedly existed.
