“It is closed and it is expected that it will not reopen for the whole week.” On the other side of a black and compact fence, the silhouette of a security guard is barely perceptible. He is the only one who took care of the people affected by the sudden closure of the Madeira Invest Club, the financial club promoted by the far-right MEP Alvise Pérez, on Monday. It offered its clients exorbitant returns, up to 53%, with supposed investments in digital and immaterial works of art and other luxury products. This is the start of what appears to be a new pyramid scam fueled by the opacity offered by the Internet and the flaws of the so-called “technological paradises”.
The office of Sentinel BQ, a company of the same owner and where Madeira Invest Club investors go to make “withdrawals” of the money obtained, is located on the ground floor of Maldonado Street in Madrid, in the Salamanca neighborhood, one of the richest in the country. It is a space with 5,000 fortified lockers, accessible by fingerprint or QR code and which, according to its website, also allows you to hide capital from embargoes, exchange cryptocurrencies for cash or access loans. All this, under a promise of total confidentiality that circumvents the anti-fraud measures to which financial institutions are bound.
On Monday morning, he did not raise the blinds despite the fact that several clients had scheduled appointments since last week. On the other side, there was only a security guard, who tried to answer investors’ questions evasively, fearing that they had lost large sums of money after trusting in financial operations that were as attractive as they were impossible.
The company’s social networks and website also stopped working. By mid-morning, the video in which the community leader announced that his company was about to close was already circulating among investors. Its visible leader, who has never been identified by his real name, is a man who always appears with a mask and who calls himself Luis. He announced this Monday the closure of the Madeira Invest Club after an alleged investigation that, he assured, would have blocked all its bank accounts and neutralized all the activity of the company, on which the CNMV issued an alert in May 2023 for non-authorization to provide services.
The vehicle promised returns well above market rates – between 30% and 60% – on purchases of digital artworks and other luxury goods. Sources close to its business say there are several hundred investors with significant investments from a wide range of sectors. Some of them tried to visit the offices on Monday to ask for explanations in the face of a “worrying” situation that smelled “very bad,” according to testimonies collected by this newspaper.
The confidentiality and profit margin promised by Madeira Invest Club managed to fill the La Zarzuela racetrack in Madrid on April 6. There, current MEP Alvise Pérez spoke and told the guests, in front of the aforementioned Sentinel BQ logo: “Here you are doing a certain type of politics, which is the counter-policy of a mafia state, forgive me for saying it, criminal, which steals more than 70 to 75% of what you all produce. “I call this modern slavery,” said the MEP, who appealed to “the freedom that these corrupt people fear so much.” “The most expensive thing in life is that which is worthless: the Spanish State,” is the motto of this company.
The director of the Madeira Invest Club assured his clients that the “persecution” he has been suffering for some time has intensified after the name of his company was linked to Alvise. The club’s main page has indicated for days that it is “under maintenance”. On Friday, some “digital art works” in which its investors allegedly participated were still visible. And also other alleged investments such as luxury yachts, shipping containers, warehouses in Punta Cana, apartments in Chiclana (Cadiz), the works of a parking lot near the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, bottles of whiskey, Ferraris, vintage motorcycles… The website belongs to a company registered in January 2022 in Orlando (Florida, United States), BLV Services LLC.
Cryptospain is no longer operational
This Monday, the Cryptospain portal also ceased its activities, stating that with Madeira they had achieved returns of “53.19%” with the purchase of a building in the center of Granada in 2023. Among the services it offered was Sentinel BQ, whose logo appeared in large letters at the event in which the current far-right deputy participated on April 6.
“The Sentinel was born with one goal: to protect what belongs to you without anyone knowing…”, the company’s website states. The owner of its website is BLV Services, the aforementioned Florida company that owns the Madeira Invest Club website. “Any relationship between the user and BLV will be governed by and interpreted in accordance with U.S. law,” the company’s website warns.
Its motto is a declaration of intent: “The security of anonymity at your disposal for your money.” They present themselves as “the only space in Europe with more than 5,000 level 7 fortified lockers, available for rent without any type of identification, always in compliance with the law. They allow you to store documentation, money, jewelry, watches, gold or USB sticks. For its custody, it offers four guarantees: “military-grade protection 24 hours a day”, “camera insurance of 1,000 million euros”, “access without KYC (English abbreviation for ‘know your customer’)”. In addition, it guarantees that the assets are “unseizable”, since the users are not identified. Sources consulted by elDiario.es point out that the monthly rent for each safe is around 500 euros.
This Luis had been promoting tax evasion for years on his networks in forums specialized in investing in cryptocurrencies. He also had his own YouTube channel, Crypto Spain, which deleted all of its videos this Monday. You can still see him in an interview from 2022 saying that he began years ago to be interested in “the creative part of tax evasion” in the face of a State that steals from you “every day.”
Likewise, he revealed that he decided to establish his tax residence in Portugal after the Treasury “ruined” him for a business that collapsed due to the real estate crisis. Or that he had never worked as a professional tax lawyer, but that after the success of his videos on YouTube, he boasted of having received offers of collaboration with the Treasury, with very important law firms and even with the Ibex 35 companies.
Cryptospain claimed on its website that it was “the largest tax community in Spain”, with 512,000 users, and that it had “saved” the sum of 524 million euros for its “community”. “9,600 companies trust us.” They also claimed to have processed more than “805” tax residences. “You work all year to pay the taxes that the State steals from you,” they stressed.
“How is this possible? Because you are not buying cryptocurrencies (or cash) directly from Sentinel BQ, but rather an individual has already made this deposit. Thus, the limits between companies and individuals of €1,000 per transaction and the obligation to pass KYC do not exist. From Sentinel, only the transaction commission of 7.99% is charged, for which you will receive a simplified invoice for each transaction,” it is explained on this site.
“Find out how to pay less tax in a limited company or how to create a company without income for the State. Stop them from taking away what you have worked so hard to earn. Change your tax activity starting today,” they added. They stated that “most Treasury inspectors do not know what a BTC, an NFT, a numismatic or a wallet is. Don’t let this happen to you like them, Cryptospain is IDEAL for them” [sic].
For more than a year, Forocoches has been wondering whether the Madeira Invest Club was a “ponzi”. [esquema piramidal] preview”. One user said he met “someone who is inside and so far happy” in August 2023. “So don’t cry and let all of us Spaniards pay for the party,” another forum member told him.
