Argentine justice has taken decisive and preventive measures in the high-profile investigation related to the LIBRA token. Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi, at the request of prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, ordered the freezing of 25 cryptocurrency wallets allegedly directly linked to manipulation and fund withdrawals. Simultaneously, the court sent official requests to six international exchanges demanding full identification information about the owners of these addresses and a detailed history of all transactions.
Geography of the freeze and demands to exchanges
The list of affected platforms is impressive, covering key market players. It involves ten addresses on Binance, eight on Bybit, two on OKX, two on CoinEx, one on FixedFloat, and two on Bitfinex. From each exchange, the judge demanded a complete package of documents under KYC standards: account opening data, internal records, IP address logs, information on linked bank accounts, and a full transaction history.
The basis for such stringent measures was the lack of a full-fledged cryptocurrency regulator in Argentina. The court ruling emphasizes that this is necessary to prevent irreparable damage that would later be impossible to remedy. The key task is to prevent the transfer or concealment of assets that may be deemed proceeds of crime and to ensure their potential recovery. The court also specifically noted the preventive nature of the decision, stating that "the freeze must stop possible new crimes during the investigation."
Technical report and fund withdrawal scheme
A technical report from the cybercrime division of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) played a decisive role in the case. Specialists managed to trace the chain of fund movements using reverse tracing and open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis. The assets flowed from a group of wallets called Team Libra Wallets. Between February 14 and 15, 2025, millions of tokens were transferred from them, which then ended up in a common intermediate wallet.
Subsequently, the investigation recorded a large fund withdrawal. On May 10, 2026, 498,539.85 USDT were received into a wallet on the Tron network via a compatibility protocol. The operation was completed in just 16 seconds without the involvement of a traditional exchange. After that, a fund fragmentation scheme—so-called "smurfing"—was launched: daily distribution of fragmented amounts across multiple wallets to complicate tracking.
It all began with President Milei's post on social network X on February 14, 2025. After that, the token's price soared from $0.01 to nearly $5 within hours, then collapsed amid sales by the project's creators. More than 40,000 people were affected. According to the investigation, fund withdrawals reached approximately $100 million. Among the accused are lobbyist Mauricio Novelli, his partner, and American Hayden Davis.
Analyst comment: This case is a vivid example of how the lack of clear regulation, combined with hype from public figures, creates an ideal environment for "pump and dump" schemes. Freezing assets on centralized exchanges is the most effective tool for law enforcement, but it only highlights the vulnerability of the DeFi sector, where such transactions occur in seconds without regard for jurisdictions. Investors should learn the main lesson: if a project is promoted by a politician and the token grows thousands of times in a day, it is almost a guaranteed liquidity exit.