A Girona court has authorized the first distribution of money recovered in Britain to victims of an alleged €15 million investment fraud in Spain. About 200 claimants are set to recover roughly 38% of the losses the court has recognised.
The case centres on Iban Juvanteny Gómez, who, according to Casino.org, is accused of posing as an experienced financial professional and running a Ponzi-style investment scheme from 2012 to 2019. Prosecutors say he falsely presented himself as a Barclays broker and promised high returns to friends, relatives and other contacts in Girona, in Catalonia.
Police say the scheme involved more than 200 people and about €15 million. It allegedly used money from later clients to make interest payments to earlier investors, creating the impression that the venture was generating real profits. Complaints reached the Mossos d’Esquadra in 2019, the scheme began to unravel, and Juvanteny surrendered in April that year.
Investigators later found that he had spent substantial sums through UK online casinos and sportsbooks. A joint inquiry involving the Mossos, Europol and West Yorkshire Police established that he had gambled several million pounds in the UK, which triggered a UK Gambling Commission probe into multiple operators for possible regulatory breaches.
After more than two years of cross-border cooperation, West Yorkshire Police transferred about €6 million to judicial authorities in Girona in late April 2021. The money was reserved for possible repayment to victims if the Spanish courts approved it.
The recovered money stemmed from sanctions imposed on gambling businesses after failures in anti-money laundering controls. The operators have not been publicly identified.
A 2021 UK parliamentary response said the Gambling Commission had required Betway, Gamesys, Platinum Gaming and Petfre, the Betfred operator, to pay compensation where stolen money had been gambled, and those payments together exceeded £6.2 million. That response did not identify the underlying crimes and did not say the cases were linked to Juvanteny. No trial date has been fixed in the Girona case, and unresolved procedural matters could push proceedings to 2028. The remaining losses have not been recovered.
