"The Pharaoh of Bitcoin" is arrested after scamming his victims for over R$1.2 Billion (around $200M)

Most people have no idea, but Bitcoin and crypto are buzzing in the news here in Brazil. For the good and also for the bad side (unfortunately).

Brazilians are known to love a pyramid (Ponzi) scheme, and in 2014 Glaidson Acacio dos Santos (a former waiter in a beach town in the state of Rio de Janeiro) founded a company GAS Consultoria to invest in cryptocurrency.

The investigation conducted by the Federal Police (Brazilian version to the FBI) discovered that the majority of the funds raised - over 1.2 billion BRL (around 200M USD) - was deposited to his bitcoin account in a big exchange (Binance? Coinbase?).

And, the curious part - his victims recently protested over his arrest claiming that GAS was not a scam or Ponzi.

Link to the news (in Portuguese) here.