Pablo Plascencia and Norberto Espinoza worked as the administrative secretary and treasurer of Wi Capital, a business that closed its doors in mid 2012.
Wi Capital’s directors and senior staff skipped town shortly after the company began to defer paying interest on investors’ savings.
The firm offered attractive interest rates of up to 22 percent monthly. They offered a range of certificates of deposit, all of them phony.
Wi Capital set up offices on Avenida Patria in July 2011 and drew in some 300 customers before the scam hit the rocks.
In February 2012 the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), the regulatory agency for Mexican financial institutions, revealed that Wi Capital was not registered to trade in any kind of securities and put the firm on their black list.
While this news failed to deter some investors, others demanded their money back and the scheme began to crumble. When the interest payments dried up and, finally, the offices closed, customers and sales reps became aware they had been taken in by a giant Ponzi scheme.
Presumably none of the investors knew that Wi Capital’s founder, Víctor Íñiguez Guerrero, was being investigated for fraudulent schemes in other states of Mexico, including Guanajuato and Guerrero.
Íñiguez was arrested in January this year in Panama and returned to Guanajuato where he faces changes relating to the investment firm Centro de Capitales del Bajío InverZión, which allegedly swindled money from investors, much in the same was as Wi Capital. He was denied bail.