A Story of the Perfect Pyramid Fraud Announced
And how they got away with it...
This is the story of how 800 Bolivian families felt victim of the perfect Pyramid Fraud scheme run in Bolivia, how their victims lost 15 million US dollars, and how they got away with it.
It was easy for the Paredes brothers: Jose, Victor, and Pablo Paredes to gain the trust and respect from the Bolivian families, after all, they came from a well known and established Bolivian military family.
In 2011 the Paredes brothers: Jose, Victor Hugo, Pablo and their partner Galleguillos started the fraud scheme under the company name: Tierra Dulce SRL in Cochabamba, Bolivia. . Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Pablo Paredes Gonzales and accomplice Fernando Galleguillos advertising their stevia products to attract more investors. Source : Newspaper Los Tiempos, July 10, 2011
During the next two years, the Paredes brothers managed to accumulate US$15 million, by offering to friends and family members investment packages in their business. The company supposedly was giving a portion of land to each investor where they were supposedly planting stevia trees, to produce a sugar alternative, that according to the Paredes family promised to pay back 100% of their investments each year, for a period of 7 years, meaning 700% earnings.
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The company Tierra Dulce started showing that it was growing up at a rapid pace: the brothers hired more than 50 employees and expanded their offices. The office workers were sitting in desks one next to each other. Later it was realized that the idea behind all this expansion, was to show to possible investors visiting the offices, that the company was growing and that it was a stable and profitable business.
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The company Tierra Dulce even had international representatives in the following countries:
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India: Mr. Naresh Kumar
China: Mr. Aaron Pang
Paraguay: Mr. Pastor Ocampo Arevalo
United States: Ms. Carmen Paredes Dockry
Source: Estafa Piramidal Corporativo Tierra Dulce
Between 2013 and 2014 the brothers started taking, as they called, business trips to the United States and other countries. Now it is known that they, were taking all the money to the United States and preparing the future establishment of the brothers in the United States.
Fernando Galleguillos, Pablo Paredes, Victor Paredes, Jose Paredes. Picture taken in one of their trips, and posted in social media and news agencies by their victims.
In 2014 when the investors stopped receiving their earnings and suspecting that the company Tierra Dulce SRL was a fraud, they complained to the authorities. However, after the Judge Pimentel brought the three Paredes brothers and their accomplice Galleguillos to question them, in an inexplicable decision, Judge Pimentel let them go.
In the next two days, the Paredes brothers and Galleguillos disappeared, unlawfully flying to the United States to avoid further prosecution.
The Paredes brothers escaped to the United States:
Their victims and authorities then found out that Tierra Dulce was just a ghost company, that was not even legally established, that there were no plantations of stevia, that they were showing the same piece of land to all their victims, and that the company owed millions of dollars to the Bolivian IRS. Everything was just a pyramid scheme to collect money thousands of dollars from their victims. The Bolivian IRS then sized the office of Tierra Dulce for tax evasion. The office workers of Tierra Dulce, hired by the Paredes brothers to impress the investors, did never get paid for several months and found themselves without a job.
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In March 7, 2015 the two wives of the Paredes brothers were sent to jail as the judge found that they were accomplices of their spouses. In June 8, 2015 the Paredes brothers' accomplice: Galleguillos returned from the US and surrender to the police, declaring that he returned because his mother was sick and due to the social pressure. He also declared that he had been a fugitive together with the Paredes brothers in the United States and that the Paredes brothers had made him death threats if he came back to Bolivia or gave any information about them.
The Paredes brothers, had managed to take all the money that the Bolivian families trusted on them, in total $15 million US dollars to the United States before they all flew to the United States.
As Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the World, the defrauded victims were left in a desperate situation, many of them not being able to rebuild any of their income to survive. In many cases the victims sold their houses or obtained loans in order to invest in the Paredes business: Tierra Dulce. These families were left devastated, most without a house and struggling with their debts acquired to participate in the business that now had vanished into thin air. Some of them have been in need of medical help, that they can not access to anymore, since all their life saving have been defrauded by the Paredes brothers. Many Bolivian immigrants that returned from working overseas to their families, now find themselves without all the money they have saved, while working overseas away from their families for several years. They find now that all of the family sacrifices have been in vane.
The victims went to the Capitol in Bolivia to protest and ask for help to capture the Paredes brothers: Jose Paredes, Victor Paredes, and Pablo Paredes.
Despite all the efforts of the victims, to bring them to justice for the return of their money and despite their wives and accomplice Galleguillos have been in jail for now 2 years, they have not returned to Bolivia. And as far as it is known, they are enjoying the money they so immorally defrauded and they have gotten away with the biggest Pyramid Fraud in the history of Bolivia that has not come to legal justice.
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Details about the legal process in Bolivia can be found here.
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