Chili on Friday dismantled a criminal organization and arrested at least 39 people, including Chileans and Chinese, accused of laundering assets worth 200 million dollars after defrauding mainly US citizens.
The investigation, according to the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office, began last May after a complaint from FBIwhich warned about transnational scams through fraudulent online investment platforms.
The victims “were mainly older American adults who transferred significant sums of money to accounts in Chile,” the Prosecutor’s Office explained.
According to what national prosecutor Angel Valencia informed the press, as a result of the operation “there are approximately 39 people detained, among them Chinese citizens.”
The prosecutor’s office reported that among those detained there were also Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, Bolivians and Peruvians, but the organization was led by “Chinese and Chilean citizens.”
The network operated mainly in the Chilean city of Iquique, about 1,800 km north of Santiago, and used commercial companies established in the free zone of this city.
The Americans “allegedly invested funds in Chile through different banking platforms,” the regional prosecutor of Tarapacá (north), Trinidad Steinert, explained to the press.
The amounts “were then transferred from one company to another, to ultimately not materialize the investments that the victims understood they were making,” Steinert added.
At the moment it was established that there are about 400 people affected in USA.
According to the Chilean authorities, to hide the origin of the money, the organization created around 119 commercial companies in the country, which facilitated its subsequent sending abroad.
