Argentina requests international arrest warrants for cryptocurrency scammers

Source: Criptonoticias Original Title: Argentina requests international arrest of cryptocurrency scammers Original Link: https://www.criptonoticias.com/sucesos/argentina-captura-internacional-estafadores-criptomonedas/ Argentine Justice activated an international alert on December 10th to detain two suspects involved in a cryptocurrency scam. This scam left hundreds of victims in San Pedro, a city in Buenos Aires Province. The measure was taken one year after the prosecutor’s office managed to trace and freeze over $3.5 million (USD) linked to the fraud.

The request was formalized with Interpol by Buenos Aires prosecutors María del Valle Viviani and Verónica Marcantonio, who identified the suspects as Deliang Chong and Pang Siew Li, aged 30 and 35, both originally from Malaysia. An arrest warrant was issued by Guarantee Court No. 1 of San Nicolás, which confirmed that the accused had left the country.

The fraudulent scheme

The case came to light following complaints from San Pedro residents who invested money following the instructions of a supposed advisor known as “La China Ali”. They claim that deposits — in pesos, dollars, or digital assets — were sent to a platform called RainbowEx, which displayed fictitious buy and sell operations of cryptocurrencies. The organization diverted the money to their own accounts.

“La China Ali” was the visible face of the fraudulent scheme in San Pedro.

Before leaving Argentina, the suspects organized an event at the Emperador Hotel in Buenos Aires to promote their operation. This was organized by a company linked to them, ALPHA BASH PLT, with a registered address in Kuala Lumpur (Capital of Malaysia).

To reinforce the appearance of professionalism, they hired foreign actors, including Poles Filip Walcerz and Maurycy Beniamin Lyczko. These individuals posed as cryptocurrency experts.

International operation: servers, emails, and legal contacts

During the investigation, it was discovered that RainbowEx’s infrastructure was hosted on Alibaba Cloud servers in Singapore and that the emails used by the operators came from providers linked to China. Additionally, there were attempts to recover the frozen funds by the prosecutor’s office through email addresses created in Hong Kong and used from Laos.

According to local sources, a legal firm from China contacted the Buenos Aires Attorney General’s Office to request information about the cryptocurrency blockade. Part of the frozen funds remains unrecovered, as access keys to the digital wallets are necessary to do so.

Migration records show that Chong and Pang entered the country in the weeks prior to the event in Buenos Aires. Shortly after, they left for Turkey. From there, they apparently resumed their route toward Asia.

With Interpol alerts already active, Argentina will seek to locate them in Asian territory to proceed with extradition procedures and bring the case to trial.

Regulatory context in Argentina

This case occurs amid increasing regulation of the ecosystem in the southern country. In July, it was reported that the National Securities Commission (CNV) filed a criminal complaint against Atómico 3 S.A., a virtual asset service provider (PSAV), over suspected fraud related to a lithium mining tokenization project in San Juan Province.