2000 + investors not yet paid by Yuri’s Investment scheme

Yuri Garcia of ACF during his interview with Leroy Smith of BIG Smith News Watch

Almost 2599 Guyanese who invested millions of dollars with Accelerated Capital Firm Inc., are yet to receive their capital investment.

This was disclosed by Cuban National Yuri Garcia- Dominguez during a Live Facebook interview with BIG Smith News Watch’s Leroy Smith on Thursday evening. Garcia-Dominguez indicated that so far some 1500 people have been repaid their capital investments.

“It is a lot of people, and with the situation, we have right now, it is hard, and we cannot in one time pull out those funds… It is hard because it was 42 days without operating the system. Unfortunately, we left the operation open when everything happened,” Garcia- Dominguez said as he made reference to his incarceration back in 2020.

He contended that Accelerated Capital Firm Inc., suffered major losses after he and his Guyanese wife, Ateeka Ishmael, were incarcerated.

Nevertheless, he said that those losses are “fixable and the money can be recovered so that we can be able to withdraw those funds.”

The Cuban national said that payment is expected to restart within five to six weeks. And according to Garcia- Dominguez, the repayment process will pose some challenges.

It should be noted that if all goes well with respect to the restarting of payments to investors, it would be about the fourth time attempts are made to repay investors.

The three previous occasions where the company attempted to commence repayment to its investors, did not last very long as the prices had to be stopped for various reasons.

“These monies [are] in a trading account; it is not in a bank account. We use the Guyanese currency, but Guyana doesn’t pay bitcoins, so we need an external exchanger, so that is what we are working on along with the trading.” Garcia told BIG Smith News Watch.

He added that they are trying also to have an agreement with any investment company that buys and sells bitcoins because as it is now, his company can withdraw the bitcoins but would not be able to transfer it to the Guyanese Bank.

The alleged Ponzi scheme operator noted, however, that investors who wish to collect bitcoins, would be given priority when payment resumed.

Reports are that over 17,000 Guyanese had invested in the Firm., which had collected millions from Guyanese to be  traded via Forex and that the investors would receive attractive returns.

Many Guyanese later came forward expressing their frustration of not receiving their returns, and efforts to withdraw their initial investment from the company were futile.

The Garcia and his wife have since been slapped with over 80 charges in relation to collecting money under false pretense, the and are also currently being investigated for money laundering.

In late September, the couple was finally released on bail in the sum of over $30 million Guyana dollars. The principals themselves and through their attorney Dexter Todd have denied that the company operates Ponzi Scheme.