Filing a criminal complaint at a police station in A Coruña over a token bought on the Solana network looks like a counter formality, and it is the document that fixes the date, the amount and the investigating court that everything afterwards will pass through, including the status of injured party you will be asked to prove in Argentina or the United States if the frozen funds are ever distributed. The Libra crypto scam consisted of Argentine president Javier Milei posting a message on X on 14 February 2025 with the contract address of the $LIBRA token, after which the price shot up within minutes and collapsed by more than 85 % in a few hours when the wallets controlling the liquidity withdrew it, the manoeuvre known in the sector as a “rug pull”. In Spain those facts fall within the offence of fraud under articles 248 and 250 of the Criminal Code, they are reported to the court of the place where the buyer lives, and the lost money is claimed as civil liability arising from the offence.
The wallet, the hashes and the screenshot of the tweet, what you can secure today on your own
Almost all the evidence in this matter sits on the blockchain and on your phone, and keeping it does not require a lawyer. Note the public address of the wallet you bought with and export from a Solana explorer the hash of every transaction, with date, time, amount paid and tokens received. If you entered with euros through a centralised platform, download its statement and the bank movement you funded it with, because that chain turns a figure in dollars into a dated loss in euros. Keep screenshots of Milei’s message, which he deleted himself hours later, or locate a dated copy in a public internet archive, together with the price chart from the moment you bought.
Touch the wallet as little as possible. Do not sign any new transaction that reaches you through a link, and do not enter the seed phrase anywhere or read it out to anyone, whatever position they claim to hold. Do not pay anyone who promises to recover what you lost in exchange for an advance either. I explain further down where that second wave comes from.
Libra crypto scam Milei, the facts that matter to a court
The $LIBRA token was launched on the afternoon of 14 February 2025 on Solana, linked to a project called “Viva la Libertad” that claimed to fund small Argentine businesses. Minutes after its creation, Milei posted a message encouraging people to invest and included the contract address, the piece of data that allows a purchase. The price went above four dollars and, within hours, a small group of wallets linked to the launch withdrew the liquidity and sold, sending the price down by more than 85 %. Milei deleted the message that same night and later maintained that he had merely shared a private project without promoting it.
On-chain analyses published in the following days estimated around 44,000 affected wallets and losses close to 90 million dollars. The figures are disputed, because a wallet is not a person, but they place the matter on the scale of article 250 of the Spanish Criminal Code, which aggravates fraud when it affects a large number of people.
The Argentine investigation involves the US businessman Hayden Davis, of Kelsier Ventures, as the token’s promoter, and the intermediaries Mauricio Novelli and Manuel Terrones Godoy, who according to the case file had access to the Casa Rosada and arranged the meetings with the president. Karina Milei, General Secretary of the Presidency, and the spokesman Manuel Adorni also appear. The case is conducted by federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi with prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, for alleged fraud and unlawful association, and within it an order was issued to freeze twenty-five crypto accounts linked to the token. There is a precedent, because in 2021 Milei had promoted the CoinX platform, which the Argentine securities regulator later flagged as unauthorised and which ended in investor claims. In parallel, a group of buyers filed a class action before a federal court in New York against Davis and the companies that took part in the launch.
Rug pull, the manoeuvre and the offence that describes it in article 248
A rug pull is the sudden withdrawal of a token’s liquidity by those who control it, so that the remaining holders are left with an asset that can no longer be sold at a real price. What turns the operation into an offence, and not a bad investment, is the preparation. If the wallets that sold in the first minute had bought seconds before the presidential message, if the project announced to fund businesses had no business, team or document behind it, and if whoever launched the token kept the liquidity the buyers put in, there is a deception built to trigger the purchase.
That is the structure of article 248 of the Criminal Code, which defines fraud as the use of sufficient deception to cause error in another and move them to make a disposition of assets to their detriment. The deception is the appearance of a project backed by a head of state, the error is believing one is entering an investment with real liquidity, the disposition is the purchase and the loss is the difference between what was paid and what the token is worth after the withdrawal. That the medium is a blockchain does not change the classification, but it does change the evidence, because every step was publicly recorded and can be reconstructed with date and time.
It is a different situation from a wallet emptied without its owner’s involvement, which is unlawful access and computer fraud. And when a WhatsApp or Telegram group steers its members into buying a token with promises of returns, the scheme is the same as in $LIBRA, with different perpetrators who are often easier to locate.
Promoting a token or taking part in the fraud, where the Criminal Code draws the line
A public figure encouraging people to buy an asset that later collapses is not an offence in itself. To answer as a perpetrator of fraud they must have known the mechanism, or at least accepted that their message served to draw in the buyers whose liquidity would later be drained. Article 28 of the Criminal Code treats as perpetrators those who carry out the act jointly and those who cooperate with an act without which it would not have been committed, and clumsiness or opportunism without that knowledge is not punished as fraud. What is under investigation in $LIBRA is whether the presidential message was a naive favour or the recruitment piece agreed with whoever controlled the token, and that will be decided by the prior meetings, the contracts and the payments to intermediaries.
The unlawful association being investigated by the Argentine courts is a separate offence. It punishes anyone who belongs to an organisation of three or more people set up to commit offences, regardless of whether each specific offence is completed. The Spanish equivalent lies in articles 515 and 517 of the Criminal Code and in the criminal organisation and criminal group of articles 570 bis and 570 ter. For the victim the practical difference is that it allows liability to be attributed to whoever organised, financed or covered up even if they never sold a single token, and widens the pool of assets against which the civil claim can be directed.
Article 282 of the Criminal Code, on misleading advertising, has a narrower reach than it appears. It applies to manufacturers or traders who make false claims about their products or services in advertising, with a penalty of six months to one year in prison or a fine of twelve to twenty-four months, and it fits whoever markets the token, not the third party who shares it. Where that advertising was the instrument used to trigger the purchases, it is absorbed by the fraud of article 250.
A large number of victims and professional credibility, the aggravating factors of article 250
Basic fraud under article 249 is punished with six months to three years in prison when the amount defrauded exceeds 400 euros. Article 250.1 raises the penalty to one to six years in prison and a fine of six to twelve months in several situations, two of which describe $LIBRA. Subparagraph 5 applies when the value of the fraud exceeds 50,000 euros or it affects a large number of people, and subparagraph 6 when the perpetrator takes advantage of their business or professional credibility or of personal relations with the victim. The backing of a president, or of an influencer who has built an audience on their financial judgement, is the credibility subparagraph 6 refers to. Where subparagraph 5 concurs with subparagraph 6, or the amount defrauded exceeds 250,000 euros, article 250.2 raises the penalty to four to eight years in prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months.
| Situation | Criminal Code article | Penalty | Limitation period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor fraud, up to 400 euros | 249.2 | Fine of one to three months | One year |
| Basic fraud, over 400 euros | 249.1 | Six months to three years in prison | Five years |
| Over 50,000 euros or a large number of victims | 250.1.5 | One to six years in prison and a fine of six to twelve months | Ten years |
| Abuse of business or professional credibility | 250.1.6 | One to six years in prison and a fine of six to twelve months | Ten years |
| Over 250,000 euros, or subparagraph 5 together with 6 | 250.2 | Four to eight years in prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months | Ten years |
The amount lost by someone who bought from Spain may be small, but the classification is made on the fraud as a whole. A buyer who lost 300 euros is the injured party of an aggravated fraud under article 250, with its ten-year limitation period, even though their figure alone would not reach basic fraud. That is why the complaint must describe the entire operation and not only your purchase.
Reporting in A Coruña a token bought on Solana, which court has jurisdiction
Spanish courts hear offences committed on Spanish territory, under article 23.1 of the Organic Law on the Judiciary, and the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court agreed in 2005 that an offence is deemed committed in every place where any element of the offence takes place. In fraud that element is the disposition of assets, and a purchase ordered from a phone in A Coruña with money leaving a Spanish account took place here. Article 14 of the Criminal Procedure Act assigns the investigation to the court of the place of the offence, so the complaint is filed at a police station, with the Guardia Civil or at the duty court of your judicial district, and from there it passes to an investigating court in A Coruña.
That the perpetrators are in Argentina and the United States does not prevent the Spanish case, but it shapes its course. The investigating court can issue requests to the platforms, turn to the Asset Recovery and Management Office and send letters rogatory, and Spain maintains criminal cooperation treaties with both countries. The usual outcome is that the Spanish case fixes the status of injured party and the amount, while the prosecution of those responsible is concentrated where they are. The complaint must be drafted knowing it will be read in another country, with the chain of transactions in order and an amount in euros that leaves no room for argument. Preparing that document, with the blockchain evidence examined by an expert, is part of the work we do at the firm in cybercrime and fraud.
The twenty-five frozen accounts, the Argentine case and the New York lawsuit
A court having frozen accounts does not mean there is a fund to collect from. The freeze immobilises whatever is in them while the investigation lasts, and that may be far less than the estimated losses, because the liquidity withdrawn from $LIBRA moved between wallets and part of it was converted into other assets. What those accounts guarantee is that, if there is a conviction with a finding of civil liability, there will be something to pay it with, and that it will be distributed among those recorded as injured parties in the proceedings. In the Argentine criminal process that status is proved before the court with a lawyer admitted there and with the traceability of the purchase I have described, and the complaint filed in Spain, with its police report and the investigating court’s decision, is the document that supports it.
The New York class action follows a different logic. The court defines who makes up the affected group, normally everyone who bought the token in a given period, and its members do not sue individually, although they must identify themselves and provide evidence when a compensation award or a settlement is distributed. A resident in Spain can be part of that class if they bought within the defined period, and freezing measures were sought in those proceedings over funds linked to the token. None of it is collected on its own. At the firm we assess with the client which of those routes is worth joining and coordinate the documentation with the lawyers in each jurisdiction.
The exchange, the influencer in Spain and what the CNMV and MiCA can do
Most $LIBRA purchases were made on decentralised exchanges on Solana, where there is no company to claim against because the protocol executes the order without an intermediary. If you bought through a centralised platform that listed the token, the situation changes. Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, known as MiCA, has applied to crypto-asset service providers since 30 December 2024 and requires them to act honestly, manage their conflicts of interest and have complaint procedures in place. Listing a token is not the same as guaranteeing it, and a claim against the platform only succeeds if it breached a specific duty, for example by failing to execute a sell order or blocking funds without cause.
The money you funded the platform with left your bank with your authorisation, which is why the payment services rules, which require unauthorised transactions to be refunded, do not apply here. The difference from the online scams in which someone operates your account without your consent is set out in the article on the bank refund after phishing.
For crypto-asset advertising aimed at investors in Spain, Law 6/2023 on Securities Markets and Investment Services assigns oversight to the CNMV, which developed it in Circular 1/2022. The Circular requires every promotion of crypto-assets as an investment to include the warning that they are not regulated and that the entire amount invested may be lost, and requires anyone with more than 100,000 followers to notify the CNMV in advance of mass campaigns. If a Spanish influencer promoted $LIBRA to their audience without those warnings, the CNMV can sanction them, and that sanction, although it does not return the money, is evidence in the criminal case and in a civil claim for unlawful advertising under Law 34/1988, the General Advertising Act. The Circular does not reach a foreign president’s message addressed to his own country, and there the only route is the criminal one.
Ten years of limitation and the risk of the second scam
Article 131 of the Criminal Code sets the limitation period at ten years for offences whose maximum penalty exceeds five years, which is the case of aggravated fraud under article 250, and the period runs from 14 February 2025. There is plenty of time to report. What does not wait is the evidence, because platforms keep their customers’ records for limited periods, the wallets that received the liquidity keep moving it, and each freeze only reaches what is still where it was when ordered. Someone who reports in three years’ time will arrive with the same on paper and far less in the accounts.
If the Spanish case identifies no one responsible in Spain, the investigating court will provisionally shelve it, which is not a definitive closure. A provisional dismissal is reopened when new elements appear, for example an Argentine ruling identifying the perpetrators or a distribution of funds to be enforced here, and the civil action arising from the offence, governed by articles 109 and following of the Criminal Code, remains alive to demand restitution and compensation from whoever is convicted.
For months, those affected by $LIBRA have been receiving messages from supposed recovery firms, foreign law practices and compensation funds asking for a fee, a wallet verification or the seed phrase in order to return what was lost. It is the same fraud under another name, aimed at people who have already shown they are willing to invest, in order to empty whatever remained in the wallet, with the same impersonation logic as in the article on scams impersonating your bank. No one acting in a real proceeding needs your seed phrase, and no compensation is collected by paying money up front.
Frequently asked questions
I bought $LIBRA from Spain, can I report it here or do I have to do it in Argentina or the US?
You can report it in Spain, to the police or the court of your place of residence, because the purchase was ordered from here and the loss occurred in a Spanish account. That complaint fixes your status as injured party and the amount. To collect from the funds frozen in Argentina or from the New York lawsuit you will need to prove your standing there, and the Spanish complaint is the document that supports it.
What evidence do I need to keep (wallet, transaction hashes, screenshots of the tweet) to prove I am a victim?
Keep the public address of your wallet, the hash of each purchase transaction with date and time, the statement of the platform you entered with euros and the bank movement that funded it. Add screenshots of Milei’s message with its date and of the price chart at the time of purchase. Do not hand the seed phrase to anyone.
The complaint with the evidence sealed, the step that comes now and who takes it
The step that comes now is the complaint in Spain, drafted with the chain of transactions in order, the amount in euros fixed and the full manoeuvre described, not only your purchase, because that document will determine your position in the Spanish case and in those in Argentina and the United States. Drafting it, having the blockchain evidence examined by an expert and deciding which foreign proceeding is worth joining is work for a lawyer who practises in criminal law and cybercrime. At the firm we do it from cybercrime and bank fraud and we reply as soon as possible to anyone who writes through the contact page or calls +34 677 841 007.