A Mexican billionaire just got scammed out of $450 million. He took out a loan to buy Bitcoin and lost almost all of it. And the alleged scammer was until recently living in a luxury villa in Greece. Here's what happened. So in 2021, a Mexican billionaire named Ricardo Salinas Pliego decided that he wanted to bet $400 million on Bitcoin. This guy owns a bunch of huge Mexican companies, including TV Azteca, Banco Azteca, and Grupo Electra. He's one of the wealthiest people in Latin America. But he didn't have $400 million of cash sitting around. So he did what many billionaires do. He took out a loan against his stock. According to the Financial Times, a London broker introduced his team to a lender called Astor Capital Fund. The company was supposedly associated with the famous Astor family. Yes, the same Astor family from the hit HBO show Gilded Age, one of the wealthiest American families of the 19th century. The broker said Astor was legit, with clients including top university endowments and family offices. Selena's own Swiss advisor also vouched for it, telling the team that Astor was backed by the family that owns the Astoria Hotels. In reality, the Astoria Hotels are owned by Hilton, not the Astor family, but no one on Selena's team caught this at the time. So anyway, Selena's team gets on a video call with a guy who introduced himself as Thomas Astor Melon, the CEO of Astor Capital. He said he was a descendant of the Astor family, and on the video call, it looked like he was on a yacht. So shortly after that, Selena's team met with another one of Astor Capital's representatives. This was a guy named Gregory Mitchell, who said he was a managing director at the company. After hashing out the details, in July 2021, Selena signed a 31 page contract with Astor. He posted shares of his company Grupo Electro worth $450 million dollars as collateral in return for a $115 million dollar loan. Now, for a while, things seem normal, but that quickly changed when one of Selena's advisors noticed something weird. Electro shares were being sold pretty heavily on the open market. That was unusual because the stock is thinly traded and held by just a few big holders. In fact, it was so strange that Selena's called his own brother and asked if he was the one selling. When the brother said no, Selena's team reached out to Astor to find out what was going on. The company told them not to worry. The shares were totally safe. Months go by and Selena's team eventually meet up with Astra representatives in person in Manhattan. Once again, they said everything was fine and that the shares were safe. Then in June of 2024, Astor did something suspicious. They sent Selena's an unsigned letter from their operations department claiming that Astor had unrestricted rights to sell the shares. Selena's was understandably a bit panicked, so he decided he wanted his stock back. In addition to Astor, he had taken out loans from three other lenders as well, so four in total. So he goes to all four and says he wants to repay the loans and get his stocks back. Three of the lenders said no problem, sure, but Astor declared them in default. They said the shares were gone, almost all of them. And this is where things get insane. When Selena's team started digging into who they were actually dealing with, the picture they found was wild. Thomas Astor Melon, the person who claimed to be the CEO and a descendant of the Astor family, he was actually a guy of Russian origin named Alexei Skachkov, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and had prior convictions for forging prescriptions and stealing jewelry. Gregory Mitchell, the guy who negotiated the deal, was actually a Ukrainian born American called Vladimir Sklaroff. Sklaroff had allegedly been running fraudulent stock loan businesses for years under various aliases. He's been sued in Hong Kong, Singapore, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. He has at least $1 billion of fraud claims against him across various countries. And he pleaded guilty to an 18 million dollar Medicare fraud in the 1990s. And three years before any of this started, Sklaroff told the court that he was destitute and on the verge of homelessness. So how did this guy manage to pull this off? Well, it was actually pretty simple. When Selena's posted his Electro shares as collateral, Sklaroff and his crew started immediately selling them. Then they used the proceeds from selling the shares to fund the loan to Selena's. So Selena's was essentially getting the money from the sale of his own stock, which of course defeats the purpose of the whole arrangement. The whole point of a loan like this is so you don't have to sell the stock. As Selena's later told the Financial Times, if I wanted to sell my stock, I would have done it myself. He took out the loan specifically because he wanted to keep his shares while still getting cash. But obviously, it's much worse than just that, because Selena's had pledged $450 million of stock to borrow $115 million of cash. The collateral was almost four times the loan amount. In a normal stock based loan, even if the borrower defaults, the lender takes what they're owed and then gives back the rest. So in this case, even if Selena's had defaulted, Astor should have sold $115 million of stock and given back the rest. Instead, they pocketed all of it. A forensic firm hired by Selena's later traced about $229 million of proceeds to Sklaroff and parties connected to him. Another $88 million is just unaccounted for. For his part, Sklaroff denies all of it. When the Financial Times asked him about the fraud claims, he said quote, I certainly don't consider myself a fraudster, but there's a saying, it takes one to know one. And asked why he was using the Astor name, he said quote, how many pubs in England are named after Churchill? Do you think they're all owned by the Churchill family? So Sklaroff was arrested and just days ago, a federal judge ordered him to be detained, calling his character quote, one of untrustworthiness. So crazy story and kind of mind boggling how Selena's and his team just sent $450 million of stock to these guys without doing adequate research. So what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments and follow for more insights on the economy and investing.
