Matías Centurión, the press chief of Estudiantes de Río Cuarto, a second-division soccer team, is accused of scamming the entire team in a crypto-linked scheme. According to local media, Centurión vanished without a trace on December 18, after being seen at a team event.

Centurión deleted all his social media accounts and disappeared, leaving several soccer players with investments that collectively exceeded a million dollars. He had leveraged his position as press chief to promote Cryptodefi, an Ethereum-based decentralized finance platform offering yields of 5% monthly to its investors.

To gain the trust of the team and its players, Centurión’s Cryptodefi became a sponsor, displaying the company’s name behind the goals on the field. During the initial months, local sources report that Centurión had no problems paying the promised yields, likely due to the influx of funds from more people entering the platform.

However, this December, as the club fell to the second division and some players planned to leave for other clubs, Centurión faced difficulties returning the invested capital to his clients. This is the version reported by the Attorney General’s office, which is currently searching for Centurión.

Cryptocurrency scams in Argentina have become quite common recently, with tens of thousands affected in similar circumstances. In October, several cases of large Ponzi schemes affected whole cities. The platforms have even used the image of soccer superstar Lionel Messi to promote these schemes, leveraging deepfakes of the player in social media to attract funds.

Recently, in part linked to this surge in crypto-linked scams, the Security Ministry of Argentina included this kind of crypto Ponzi scheme to the list of activities that will be tracked and surveilled preventively by police forces. The authorities specified that the “unauthorized financial intermediation through the use of crypto-assets” activities would be targeted in preventive activities.

Read more: Argentina to Patrol Cyberspace in the Hunt for Crypto Criminals

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