Andrea Medri and Davide Barbieri, founders and former directors of the cryptoasset change The Rock Trading, which ended up in judicial liquidation (the previous chapter) in April 2023 with a gap of just about 66 million euros, ended up beneath arrest. The precautionary custody order, signed by the investigating choose of Milan Rossana Mongiardo, on the request of the deputy Roberto Pellicano and the prosecutors Pasquale Addesso and Grazia Colacicco, was carried out by the troopers of the Special Currency Police Unit and the Milanese Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Gdf who handled the complicated investigations into an affair that concerned 18 thousand individuals.
The 4 crimes charged
The suspects had been accused of 4 important crimes: fraudulent chapter, false company communications, fictitious formation of share capital and monetary infidelity. Until the crack, The Rock Trading was one of the crucial accredited Italian cryptocurrency operators (32 sorts had been circulating on its wallets, from Bitcoin to Ethereum). Since the tip of November 2022, nevertheless, operators had recorded progressive delays in funds which had been turning into extra accentuated.
The hemorrhage
This triggered a wave of withdrawal requests from customers. Until February 2023 when, to stem the bleeding, the organizers ordered the blocking of operations, which solely subsequently turned definitive and which quickly resulted within the presentation of over 700 complaints to the Gdf by clients. The investigation then developed overseas with requests for rogatory letters within the United States and Switzerland with two investigation orders in Lithuania and Ireland which made it attainable to reconstruct the supply of a part of the cash on the a part of the suspects.
Letters rogatory additionally within the USA
Recently the request for authorized help within the USA was built-in and transmitted to Washington by the Ministry of Justice, resulting in the seizure of cryptocurrencies on USB sticks value 500 thousand euros. During the investigation, the investigators recovered some chat conversations on the corporate platform Slack (which the suspects had been satisfied that they had destroyed) wherein it was attainable to learn sentences akin to: «watch out, even there we at the moment are lovely beneath… my 70 at the moment are misplaced and there are customers with many bitcoins of their physique, who in the event that they withdraw…”. From other conversations it could then be deduced that the failure dates back to previous years, when the company had its headquarters in Malta: “These are previous losses from the golden instances”, wrote Medri in 2020. A scenario in which, then, there they were “transactions” carried out using “funds belonging to different shoppers”.
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