[faint choral singing]
[applause]
[Cositorto] I was at the entrance
and saw them giving out
these little mirrors.
I will ask all of you
to please
take them out of your pockets.
And hold them in your hands.
I'll ask you to do something
you haven't done in a long time.
Look into your own eyes
like it's the first time.
Can you see your eyes?
- [man] Yes!
- Can you see them well?
- [man] Yes!
- Put the mirror right in front of them.
That's it.
I think you've forgotten about yourselves.
Keep looking in the mirror,
because I will now read to you
what I once told myself.
- Do you all have a mirror?
- [audience] Yes!
If you don't have it,
close your eyes and imagine one.
Every morning,
when I wake up feeling sad,
I'll look into the mirror.
And I'll know I have a heart full of love.
And full of courage to carry on.
I want you to give
yourselves one last chance,
because it's very easy to stay seated
and complain about the past.
I now invite you to make a final decision,
and dare to stand on your chair!
Yes, go on, do it!
Stand on your chairs
and make that final decision,
because human beings,
ladies and gentlemen,
were born to be free.
We were born to reach
our fullest potential.
That is our one and only opportunity!
Interpol has ordered
the detainment of Leonardo Cositorto,
CEO of the Generation Zoe organization.
We're talking about
a Ponzi scheme, a scam.
HOW DID GENERATION ZOE WORK?
The commission keeps increasing
in relation to the amount of friends
you can convince.
How many of you are freer than before?
[all cheer]
[reporter 1] Cositorto directed
and promoted an association
to commit illegal acts.
[reporter 2] This so-called company,
Generation Zoe, doesn't produce anything.
Its only activity is to collect money,
return a part, keep the rest. Simple.
GENERATION ZOE WILL HAVE A NEW CEO
What kind of a company can offer
ALLEGED SCAMS WITHIN GENERATION ZOE
PRIOR TO CHARGES
[Cositorto] Who has bought a house
or a new car this year?
[crowd cheers]
The Generation Zoe scandal
is beginning to spread internationally.
[woman] It's not only in Colombia.
Also in Peru, Ecuador, the United States,
Guatemala, Mexico,
Spain, Italy, and Germany.
[Cositorto] How many of us are happier?
[reporter 3]
What's behind this cryptocurrency pastor?
Is there something, or nothing at all?
[upbeat techno music playing]
[Cositorto] The idea was to create
a Zoe way of life, which is a choice,
because we don't have to live
in the world created for us.
Of course, this is entirely
divergent, disruptive,
and different from the world provided
by the traditional political system
where they give you a roof,
put you in a box, give you a salary,
and have you earn what the market allows.
On the other hand, Zoe allows you
to earn according to your efforts.
Leaders, are you following me?
["Vida Acuática" by Kita Pena playing]
[Cositorto] We have escaped
this culture's enslaving paradigm,
and have entered
the paradigm of abundance.
[water bubbling]
["Vida Acuática" continues playing]
[tweeting]
- [camera shutters snap]
- [audience cheering]
[protesters shouting]
ILLUSIONS FOR SALE:
THE RISE AND FALL OF GENERATION ZOE
[lilting music playing]
[Juliana] Villa María is a city
where we have almost everything.
Well, we're missing a mall.
[Belén] It's like a big town.
If I know someone, most likely
we'll have someone else in common.
There's a lot of purchasing power,
especially from people
with undeclared income sources.
It's a city where you can grow,
if you're willing to.
[Cositorto]
Like most of the Pampa Húmeda region,
Villa María lives off its rural area.
Twenty-four percent
of the national production of milk
is here.
It's become the country's main dairy area,
over Sunchales and Rafaela.
There is a lot of industry
adding value to rural production.
[coins jingle]
[lighthearted music playing]
[cash register dinging]
[Cositorto] These factors illustrate
the economic power
that Villa María
and all of its surrounding areas possess.
Leonardo Cositorto
knew what Villa María had to offer.
He knew the place.
If you could go anywhere in the country,
why would you come to Villa María?
[train horn blows]
VICTIM OF GENERATION ZOE
My name is Belén.
I was born here in the city.
I have a wholesale
clothing and footwear business.
I've been doing that
for almost seven years.
And I have two children.
[gentle music playing]
[Belén] Maybe it was the kind of life
that I was leading.
It all felt a bit flat to me,
like a whole lot of the same.
I felt like something was missing,
and there was something else
left for me to discover.
I began studying coaching in 2019.
COACHING LESSONS
SEARCH WITH GOOGLE
[Belén] I saw it as an opportunity
for personal growth,
and it gave me the desire
to start dreaming again.
Ontological coaching gives us the ability
to communicate effectively with others,
and it encompasses everything.
Communication, listening,
active listening, and beyond.
It's not only
about transmitting the information,
but also learning how to receive it.
[Belén] My teachers were Claudio Álvarez
and Silvia, his mother.
And if we all work as a team,
we'll be able to achieve
extraordinary results...
[Belén] We'd go to Silvia's house.
There were, like,
ten to fifteen students at most.
[Silvia] It took me an incredibly
long time to believe in myself.
To realize that I can do...
[Belén] For me, my life was defined
by before and after coaching.
They taught us
to see things from another angle.
We learned to use
our minds in a different way.
It was always through a lens
of personal growth and self-empowerment.
Never a financial point of view.
[Silvia] All of the information
that I have gained
through my experiences...
[Belén] Once I was finished
with all of my studies,
I started hearing more about Zoe.
It was really starting
to make some noise around town.
FOUNDER OF GENERATION ZOE
Greetings to all Córdobans,
and those who aren't.
Today at 5:00 p.m.,
don't miss the grand opening
of one of the offices
that will leave a mark on both
Argentina and Latin America.
"Opportunity" is the key word.
[Silvia] Zoe!
As you can see, this is the lobby.
And today is our grand opening
here in Villa María.
We have the traders over here.
And over there you can see the offices.
Here we have the tellers,
or cashiers, so to speak.
And after a lot of hard work,
today is the opening day of our own space.
GENERATION ZOE LEADER
VILLA MARÍA
Have they walked around the offices?
Have you seen everything yet?
Do you know what to do?
When you come to collect your money,
do you know what to do?
GENERATION ZOE LEADER
VILLA MARÍA
[Belén] Through social media,
I began seeing
how their lives had changed.
All of a sudden,
they began having
all of these fancier things.
Houses.
Trips.
Cars.
- How are you, Claudito?
- Great.
I'm actually living out one of my dreams.
I had always said to my mother,
my kids, my family,
and to everyone else,
I would tell them that one day,
I would have this car.
And I even had it as my computer's
screen saver for many years.
But what I never, ever imagined
or even considered was a possibility,
was that I would be receiving
this kind of a blessing
at this stage of my life.
And it's all thanks to you, Leo.
To the team, to Zoe,
and to the lifestyle we are living.
Thank you.
Claudito, three years ago,
what did you drive, a photocopier?
The closest I'd gotten to it
was a photocopier...
[Belén] So, I went to Claudio
to ask what this was all about.
He told me, and then invited me,
to a business presentation.
So I went, and the rest...
In order to tell you what Zoe is,
I first have to talk to you
about the essence of it all.
That, at it's core, it is a vision
of an educational model
that stems from coaching.
However, we have come to understand
that solely conducting training
was not enough.
If we didn't have the means
to pay our light bills,
our water bills,
and our children's expenses,
if we ended up getting sick,
we could end up going into bankruptcy.
That is the reason
why we created this tool,
to give everybody
the possibility of making money.
That's when they told me
that through the educational membership,
I could study coaching
and get paid while I was doing it.
EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM
GENERATE INCOME
Our memberships
had about four pillars altogether.
The first pillar has always been
about the training of our leadership team.
Then we created
what we called the referral plan.
In this plan, for every person
that was referred by a member,
we gave them royalties and earnings.
There was also another pillar,
which we called the pillar of tourism.
If you made a one-time investment
of just $1,600,
we would take you on at least two trips
over the next two years.
And then, finally,
we had the fourth pillar,
which was the investment area,
with a 7.5% profitability
in the same currency in which
the person had initially invested.
I had determined that return myself
because I decided
that this amount was enough
for the company to sustain itself
and to grow as well.
I told my husband about it,
checked how much money I had at home,
and he said "yes" with no hesitation.
Mostly because we had both been looking
for an opportunity to grow.
I took the amount and deposited it.
[car engine running]
[Cositorto] Hey, how are you?
This is Leonardo Cositorto greeting you.
I want to tell you that,
for the last 27 years,
I have been dedicated
to the networking and sales business.
And in those years,
I've been in over a thousand planes.
A thousand planes that cost me
around half a million dollars.
Just in tickets alone.
They may have cost even more.
I have committed my life to being
a professional ontological coach,
and we train leaders
all over Latin America.
[lilting piano music playing]
[announcer] Going across Latin America,
bringing forth opportunity.
Spreading everything, from the word of God
to business opportunities.
The man you were waiting for...
[Raquel] What everyone
was saying in the auditorium
at the Santa Marta convention,
was that he was a renowned master coach
in the ontology field in Argentina...
VICTIM OF GENERATION ZOE
...and he was an experienced businessman.
[announcer] Mr. Leonardo Cositorto!
[Raquel] I had never heard
of Leonardo Cositorto.
When he stepped onto the stage,
the applause was just overwhelming,
and the joy and all that cheering
just wouldn't stop.
[applause]
It really caught my attention.
Everything I see is a perception,
the interpretation of an illusion.
But my ego makes me believe
that what I see is the reality.
[Raquel] He had a great sense of humanity.
[Cositorto] Even in Scripture, the Bible
says we see things through a mirror.
Who are we actually looking at
in the mirror? Ourselves.
He was sensible.
[Cositorto] Repeat, ontological coaching
isn't just information.
It's a paradigm for winning.
THE 21 INSIGHTS
[Raquel] Right at the end
of giving the talks,
they started offering
their educational packages.
ALL CAREERS AND INSIGHTS FOR FREE
What were the subjects?
BETTER THAN JUST A SERMON
Neurolinguistics, ontology, finances.
I was on the fence
because it's one thing to like something,
and another to want to buy it.
I wasn't sure I wanted to buy it.
However, when I went back
to the activities
after finishing my lunch,
when I opened my wallet,
I discovered that all my cash was gone.
[Cositorto] Unfortunately, we will be
sharing what we have to... Yes?
So I told the master coach
what had just happened to me.
And he said,
"Well, I'm willing to count the money
that they stole from you
as part of the payment,
and you can pay off
the remaining amount next week."
To me, that was a clear example
of solidarity and support.
[calliope music playing faintly]
And I thought,
"What if I buy it? What if I pay it off?"
"Why not?"
"I'll study, and if it yields returns...
it would be good for me."
In addition to the way
he handled that auditorium,
which was hypnotizing.
It was amazing.
And it was something
that slowly started taking a hold of me.
[uplifting music playing]
It seems like he studies people's minds,
and he sees into them.
He just says what you want to hear.
[distant police siren]
When I finally decided
that I was going to pay off
the educational package,
I had already signed up
to be a student member of the Zoe group.
[uplifting music continuous]
[music fades]
ARGENTINA
MARCH 3RD 2020
[news anchor] The first case
of coronavirus has been confirmed.
We have the first positive case
of coronavirus.
- A 46-year-old man in Italy...
- [reporter] He had no symptoms.
MARCH 20, 2020
[Fernández] Starting at midnight tomorrow,
everyone must comply
in total preventative social isolation.
No one can leave their place
of residence at any time.
Everyone must stay at home.
- [farts]
- [woman laughs]
Hi, I want to tell you that,
during this quarantine,
I've met some new friends
that have always been in my house,
but I'd never noticed them before.
Let me introduce you.
[in high-pitched voice] "Hi, how are you?"
"How's it going?"
[Maximiliano]
My name is Maximiliano Batista.
I'm 43 years old.
I've been working since I was 11.
In warehouses, ice cream shops,
and when I was 14
I worked at a funeral home.
VICE PRESIDENT AT GENERATION ZOE
One day, when I was 18 years old,
I went out looking for a job.
And that's when I met Leonardo,
who had a direct sales company.
A car has high operational...
You'd see him driving
a Toyota Country, an amazing car.
He wore the best suits, like Hugo Boss.
And I used to buy my clothes secondhand.
[chuckles]
You could see that people admired him,
they'd applaud him, he'd give his talks.
I thought he was amazing
and wanted to be just like him.
Every morning, go into the bathroom,
look at yourself in the mirror, and say,
"Wow, I'm so good-looking!"
Come on, everyone together!
"I'm so good-looking! My body's amazing!"
[audience repeats]
Then just kiss yourself a little bit.
Very good.
[Maximiliano]
So, I started working for that company.
I remember he asked me
what I needed and I said,
"Audio equipment and a fridge."
And he says, "If you become a manager,
I'll give you the fridge
and the audio equipment."
Of course I helped Maxi Batista.
Absolutely.
I gave him a hand so he could grow.
The rest was all thanks to his own merit.
[Maximiliano] I remember I worked so hard
that in four and a half months,
I became a manager.
But, hey, life happens.
I was in the company
for seven or eight months,
and during that time
I disagreed with him on many things.
So I left the company
and started on my own.
Today's training challenge. First...
Until the pandemic hit, I was doing well.
I had four cars working at a cab company,
a cosmetics company.
I bought my apartment.
When the pandemic hit,
there was a breaking point
because all the door-to-door salespeople
that worked with me had to leave.
CLOSED - 80 DAYS SHUTDOWN
IMPOSSIBLE TO SUSTAIN
WE CAN'T OPEN YET!!!
I went out with a table and sold perfumes,
lotion and hand sanitizer to people.
Right around that time,
Leo used to live
around the corner from my office,
and that's when we started
to get in touch again.
I HAVE A PROJECT TO TELL YOU ABOUT
IT'S CALLED GENERATION ZOE
That's when Leo came up to me and he said,
"Max, I need a coach to give these talks."
And I told him, "Sure, no problem."
Hi. I want to tell you
that we're giving out ten scholarships.
We live in an Argentina that's wealthy,
but mentally poor.
Today, I will talk about the three A's.
These are the fundamentals
to achieve success...
I'd get paid for each talk,
so I'd show up and lead the session.
I was just like any other hired coach.
[man 1] We'll tell you a little bit
of what Zoe's about,
and about Leo's goal,
which is to certify a million people
to make a living being coaches.
[woman] Good evening, everybody,
in all countries of Latin America.
A marvelous audience of 326 people.
I imagine you're tuning in
from all over the world.
Welcome to this neuromarketing madness.
It's really a pleasure to have you here.
I've missed giving these talks.
[Raquel] During the pandemic,
the information spread massively.
And because of it,
so did people's participation.
[man 2] Our main purpose
is to democratize education,
so everyone can have access
to an education focused on results.
Why do some people
achieve better results than others?
Thank you to all attendees.
Participant numbers keep growing,
people are still coming in.
ATTENDEES
Because we love what we're doing here,
and because we want so much more.
[Cositorto] During the pandemic,
everyone was staying in their homes.
Many people were looking for remote jobs.
They were looking for something to study,
or some kind of economic endeavor.
People were bored,
and the circumstances of the pandemic
helped us grow a bit faster
than we ever expected.
[upbeat pop music playing]
We've also got Leo here.
Leo has just signed in.
As soon as we opened up the chat room,
there were already 720 people.
They were connected and waiting.
It's amazing. Let me tell you, Claudito,
I'm in Mexico right now.
I just landed in Cancún.
We're getting ready for today's event.
All of these people behind me,
they are all waiting.
- [Cositorto] Spectacular.
- Ready for the flight.
Well, we're ready to go, Cartagena.
- [all chanting]
- [rhythmic clapping]
Guys, this is us living the Zoe life!
- From Brazil...
- [all] We are Zoe!
♪ Your life will change
Oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ Zoe... ♪
Medellín, here!
I want to thank Zoe and Leo Cositorto
for this chance to meet new people
and learn from each of them.
This has been an amazing experience.
[all cheering]
An impressive night in Arequipa
with a full theater.
We're kicking off tomorrow.
People are really happy and thankful.
I was hospitalized,
and I escaped from two hospitals.
Don't talk to me about the pandemic.
I know it from the inside.
I might've been the first
forced into isolation in Argentina.
I don't know if it was 'cause I'm crazy
or 'cause of COVID.
I ran away from two hospitals!
Around November 2020, Leo says to me,
"Max, I need more of you here."
"Travel with me, let's form a duo."
I thought, "Maybe that's my life purpose,
to continue giving these talks
and touching people's lives
and their hearts."
You are the one who can bless,
the one who can perform miracles.
You have that power.
Imagine if you showed that to an employer.
I loved going on stage,
giving talks and seeing people transform.
I'd finish and people would come up to me
and they'd say,
"Max, you changed my life."
"I used to waste away
lying in bed all day."
"I couldn't get up."
"And now I get up
just to come and see you talk."
[gentle music playing]
[Mirian] My name is Mirian.
I was born in Buenos Aires.
I'm married, I have three kids.
And I'm a healthcare professional,
a dialysis technician.
I first I heard about Zoe
from a person that I fully trusted.
VICTIM OF GENERATION ZOE,
BUENOS AIRES BRANCH
They said, "Look, I have something
great for you that you're gonna love,
and it will change your life completely."
"I've actually been a part
of this group for a while,
and I think this will be perfect for you."
[gentle music continues]
They then explained that it was real,
and that it provided
a 7.5% return each month.
And I didn't have to do anything at all
other than making the first investment.
It was all about making your own money
by putting it to work for you.
And I said that I loved it!
[gentle music continues]
[Mirian] So that's how it happened.
Without knowing anything about Zoe,
without ever seeing their logo
or knowing who their director,
owner, or creator was,
I started my first membership.
STUDY AND INVEST IN YOUR FUTURE WITH ZOE
When I opened up their website,
I noticed that it had my name
and picture posted on it,
and the website showed me a virtual office
that they called the "back office."
[mouse clicks]
You could check things on your cell phone,
you could see how your money
was growing little by little.
It was clear as day,
in this beautiful virtual cloud.
So you'd always get excited about it.
It was this feeling like,
"Wow, I have so much money.
I can't believe it."
And so, of course, you begin wanting
to share this with people
and talk about it,
because it's contagious.
"What are you up to?" "Did you see this?"
"What are you doing right now?"
I started to see this opportunity
as a doorway to achieve my dreams,
my financial freedom,
and my economic independence.
I started having more time to myself,
for my household and my children.
[gentle music continues]
You would see this beautiful world
and think that this is the new thing.
It's what's coming next.
I want to ride this new wave.
I thought it was all
very interesting and enthralling.
[gentle music continues]
[Mirian] Before you realized it,
you were constantly thinking about it.
You'd wake up with Zoe
and go to bed with Zoe.
[mysterious music playing]
[Belén] I can't remember the exact date,
but later I was invited
to a convention in Carlos Paz.
I think they had filled up ten hotels.
The minimum investment was $400.
But if you could put in a thousand,
you would get access to this convention
in which the hotel, the meals,
and the tickets for the lectures
were all included.
[audience cheers and applauds]
[Belén] There, in Carlos Paz,
I met Cositorto, Max Batista,
and many of the leaders
from all the other provinces.
It's about time that something
came into this world
to shatter the culture and the routine.
That something is here.
And that something is Generation Zoe!
And when you started talking to people,
we were all on the same page
about pursuing our dreams.
They were like, "Hey, what do you want?"
"I came into Zoe
'cause I don't have my own home."
Just like me.
You'd hear everyone from millionaires
to the poorest person
that had just gotten in.
We were in it together.
[inaudible]
All of the speakers were people
that had been in the business for a while.
And they'd talk about
how much they had invested,
and when and how much
they had earned to date.
[Gaby] As an actor,
I was barely making $700 a month.
And today, working with Zoe,
I'm making over $15,000 each month.
[cheers and applause]
A donation of $1,000. So much gratitude!
Well, let's join them to make it 1,500.
[man] There we go. He's taking $1,500!
COSITORTOLAND
[Cositorto] It's a boy!
[man whooping]
[Cositorto]
He has the same name as my son.
- Santiago!
- [Claudio] Where is Santiago?
Over there in the back!
[Belén] There were all of these
comedians and dance groups.
I remember that Max Batista
came out on stage,
and he started dancing.
Then, at a certain point,
he took off his shirt
and he started doing
some kind of a sexy dance.
Cositorto was just
looking at him in amazement
from a small balcony.
It was like going to Disneyland.
I mean, I've never been,
but from what I've seen,
it's an amusement park
filled with fantasy.
And it felt like
we were living a life of luxury.
It felt like you could do
anything you could ever want
if you were part of Zoe.
[cork pops]
I told my husband
I'd ask Claudio to work at their office.
He asked, "How will you do that?"
"How will you manage it
with your business?"
I didn't care.
I wanted to speak to Claudio because,
with the investments I'd been making,
it would take me much longer
to achieve what I wanted.
I was already in, but I wanted more.
I was seeing normal people that would
come up to me to talk about their dreams.
"I'm putting all
of my life's savings in here
because I know
that this will give me more."
"I know that I will be able
to help my parents retire
and give my children a better life."
That's where it clicked.
This is a door to a magical world,
and we're going in.
[mystical music playing]
It woke up a desire in me to do anything,
especially once I was in.
I was living what they were living.
GENERATION ZOE
WE UNITE LIVES AND DREAMS
[soft music playing]
[Nahuel] I'm Nahuel Bargaz.
I'm now 32 years old.
I used to work in the automotive industry.
I worked at a service station
where I had my own repair shop.
A friend began talking to me
about investments,
GENERATION ZOE TRADER
VILLA MARÍA BRANCH
the world of cryptocurrencies,
and honestly,
there was a lot I didn't understand.
So I started studying it,
and that's when I rediscovered
my love for learning,
and I got into the trading world.
By word of mouth,
it started spreading all over town
that there was some sort
of an investment fund
that also had traders.
They were all being trained
while they were working there.
At that moment, they had already
been interviewing traders
who had related work experience.
[calliope music playing]
Ladies and gentlemen,
the key word is "opportunity."
Come closer. You might be wondering
what trading is all about.
Trading, my dear audience,
consists of trying to buy cheap
and sell high in a short period of time,
in order to make a profit. Simple as that.
And what are we trading?
Well, we have five options.
Shares listed on the stock exchange.
Currencies, such as euros,
dollars, yens, pounds,
in a market called Forex.
The infamous cryptocurrencies
such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others.
Raw materials, especially gold and silver,
and other kinds
of commodities and futures.
It is simply an agreement
between two parties
that are committed to exchanging assets
at a future established date
for a set price.
Trading is an activity
where you can earn or lose money.
It requires training and dedication.
For example, no one would think
of piloting an airplane
after just two internet tutorials.
Right?
[Nahuel]
The first interview was over Zoom.
And then they asked me
if I could go into their offices
for a second round of interviews.
I went,
they explained their workflow
and methodology to me,
and I told them I liked it.
What trader wouldn't want the opportunity
to manage capital
and work doing what they like to do?
It was every trader's dream.
[hopeful music playing]
[Nahuel] The place felt calm and balanced,
and the offices
were really well-thought-out.
To be able to come in, open my computer,
talk to the coworker next to me and ask,
"Hey, what are you analyzing today?
What do you like working on?"
I was finally working in a place
where I could utilize what I had studied,
I could help people capitalize on profits,
and I could expand my trading expertise.
And really, after that,
everything just flowed.
[hopeful music continues]
The first thing that they did
when we got there
was take the initiative
to test our abilities.
Their idea was to see
how well we were able
to follow some instructions
from someone who was an expert trader.
And that expert trader
was named Rosa, María Rosa.
Hello, Maracaibo, this is Rosa María
González Rincón from Argentina.
I am currently working for Zoe,
and I am designing three platforms
that are going to change the way
we transfer, produce,
and invest all our money.
I also work as a professional trader
for the company,
and along with a team in Córdoba,
here in Argentina,
we managed to produce $125,000 in earnings
for the company,
and this was just in the last week.
[Nahuel]
She was clearly very knowledgeable
in everything that she was doing.
Honestly, she was really remarkable.
[dramatic music playing]
[Belén] When I first started
working there,
I did a little bit of everything.
And then I moved on to customer care.
That's where people
would come in to talk to me
about investing in the business.
When people came into the office,
many of them already knew
what it was about,
because it was spreading so quickly
by word of mouth.
WELCOME TO ZOE
ZOE PREMIUM
I'M NEW!
When you joined,
you had to enter under someone else.
I'd bring someone in and make a commission
for having introduced them
to the business.
That person would then bring someone else,
and I'd also receive a benefit from them
bringing people into the business.
[inaudible]
[Cositorto] I have all
of the people in my network
up to the eighth line,
which in a perfect matrix of five,
is around 400,000 people.
If I have a thousand people in my network
and they each get the PIN,
and each PIN up to the eighth line
pays me a hundred dollars,
how much do I immediately earn?
- [man] A hundred thousand.
- Hundred thousand what?
- [man] Dollars.
- Hundred thousand dollars.
[Belén] Those of us
from the lower middle class
would reinvest the money we'd make.
Then there were also
other kinds of people.
There were businessmen, lawyers, bankers.
That was a lot of money.
[dramatic music playing]
People would come in to collect $60,000.
I signed those receipts.
Sixty thousand dollars, here you go.
They'd take that money in their pockets.
At one point, a man came in
with cardboard boxes,
and those boxes were filled with dollars.
He walked in kicking those boxes,
and he asked,
"Where do I put this?"
"What's in them?" I asked.
"Money." "In the boxes?"
"Yes, I brought in dollars."
There were $200,000 in those boxes.
It was impressive.
I swear, I had never seen
so much money in all my life.
[dramatic music playing]
FOR "EL DIARIO"
HAPPY 30 YEARS OF TRUTH-TELLING.
[Sergio] It was September of 2021.
The first thing was a publication
in the local press,
including our newspaper
El Diario del Centro del País.
The article talked about the arrival
of a soccer team
that was going to take up a spot
in the local league in Villa María.
The soccer team was called Deportivo Zoe.
ZOE WITH PLANS TO "GO ALL IN"
JOURNALIST "EL DIARIO"
VILLA MARÍA
Big news. This was a new team.
It was the first time that a new team
came up from an economic background
instead of a social background.
A DIFFERENT
SOCCER CLUB
This team had well-known public figures...
WITH
DISCIPLINE
...of local and the national sports world.
SPIRITUAL
COACHING
MENTAL
STRENGTH
I'm not going to say
that this was the event
that caused me to investigate things,
but something about it did catch my eye.
So I began paying
a little more attention after that.
[dramatic music playing]
[Sergio] When you start noticing that
the receptionist from the local clinic
that you normally go to
is no longer working there,
you begin to ask yourself why.
And then you find out
that they now work for Zoe.
When you go to the car dealership
to service your car,
and you find out that the salesperson
who sold you your last car
does not work at the dealership anymore,
and you start seeing branded vehicles,
not just any cars.
Audi,
Cooper,
BMWs, all with the Zoe logo on them,
that's when you start thinking,
"What is really going on here?"
Then, almost immediately,
a similar situation comes to mind.
Something that had happened
previously in Villa María
with a company called Soluciones Diarias.
CUSTOMER SAYS PAYMENTS
AREN'T BEING REGISTERED
The first thing that occurred to me
was asking the National Securities
and Exchange Commission, via email,
if this company called Generation Zoe
was officially registered.
And the National Commission of Exchange
wrote back to me saying it was not.
They said that back in October
they had issued a note for them
to cease their economic offerings.
I was feeling quite alone in trying
to uncover the truth in all of this,
so that's when I decided
to publish the first article.
I wrote it in one night.
When I wrote it, all I really wanted
was for this not to happen again.
THE COMISSION OF EXCHANGE
DECLARED CESSATION FOR ZOE
We've just opened up
the offices of Aviva Zoe two weeks ago,
so we really shouldn't be surprised
about being att*cked like this, should we?
And it's more than likely
that they will keep on attacking.
And you know what?
I happened to get a WhatsApp message
from our leader, and he said,
"You really thought that we would conquer
the entire city and the entire region,
and that they would just cheer us on?"
"Don't be so naive."
[foreboding music playing]
[phones ringing]
[Nahuel] By November,
Zoe Broker started to operate.
And they told us
that we would get the opportunity
to work with more significant capital.
We're talking about $50,000.
[María Rosa] Hello there, Zoe community.
We are over here
at the Zoe Broker facilities
showing you a little piece
of what our platform is all about.
This is the brains of it all,
and this is our license which endorses us
as an official and international broker.
Therefore, we will now be able
to deal in different financial markets.
We invested an enormous amount of money
during a period of several months.
In total, it cost us over $3 million
to have that broker.
From there, we started
to open accounts of $50,000.
One for every trusted person,
or one per country.
And then we moved on
to opening $250,000 accounts.
From there, we began venturing
into other markets,
such as Forex futures
and synthetic indices.
There were 350 traders,
and they were constantly trading.
They were usually making
between one and two percent daily.
That one or two percent translates
into about 25 or 40%
monthly profitability.
Rosa María made almost 90%.
She even made 97% percent in one month.
And she put it all on display.
We are super happy
because Rosa María received an award
just after 17 days
of having started operations
on the synthetic indices.
She is truly achieving
extraordinary results every day.
So today, we wanted to give her a reward.
She is setting an example of humility,
dedication, and discipline for us all.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] Why are some people
living on the streets begging for money
while others are creating
their own income,
like what we're doing in Zoe?
You would invest,
check it in the back office...
VICTIM OF GENERATION ZOE
BUENOS AIRES BRANCH
...see daily interest rates,
compound interest.
I didn't know what these things were,
reinvesting, and those sorts of things.
It didn't make sense to me.
It was missing a paper trail.
And along came Yrimia, and we knew
that he was a former national judge.
[Hector] By the end of March of 2021,
the president of the company
comes to see me in my office.
And he asks me, "What do I have to do
to comply with Argentina's legislation?"
GENERATION ZOE LEGAL ADVISOR
The goal is to make it abundantly clear
that today, as an economic group,
this is a properly established company.
It is properly registered before
the General Inspectorate of Justice,
along with its trust assets
which are regulated
by the Ministry of Justice.
This means that this is all regulated.
Today, all are members of the trust.
They are no longer franchised,
but participants.
They no longer receive interests.
They now receive dividends.
[Belén] This man comes in
to quiet down everybody's doubts.
Yrimia says to me, "Max, the trust
is gonna protect the company."
"You'll have a $120,000 insurance."
"And if anything happens within
the company, you'll be safeguarded."
I would like to sum this up
with a funny anecdote.
A journalist once asked Kissinger,
"How did you make so much money?"
And maybe one day someone will ask us,
"How did Zoe make so much money?"
Kissinger wouldn't answer
until one day he said,
"You just have to make the first million."
So the natural question
after that was, "How?"
And he said, "By doing whatever possible."
"What about after that?"
"By following the law."
He reassured us
publicly
that we could be absolutely at ease
because since he was the legal director,
he was the one responsible
for the legality of every one
of Zoe's products.
The other day, Maxi was just here with me
and I said to him,
"Maxi, we're going all in on Bitcoin."
Being next to Leo meant always
talking about possibilities, growth,
of what was going to happen,
of what could come.
People would come up to me saying,
"Uncle Max,
I have a business idea to bring in."
And the first thing I'd say to them was,
"Don't talk to me, talk to Leo.
He's the owner."
He'd take ownership
of all the ideas and projects.
Two people brought their dream
to our company,
and now they will make good money.
Besides, we want our puppies
and cats to be in a good place.
Who here has a dog or a cat?
[dramatic music playing]
The businesses were what gave me
the most reassurance,
without a shadow of a doubt.
[indistinct chatter]
[electricity buzzing]
We bought two Zoe Burger establishments
for approximately $60,000 each,
not including remodeling costs,
and then, right behind that,
we had Zoe Car.
You could see
that they had all of these stocks
in different types of companies.
The cars and the car offices were there.
Everything was growing.
Everything just kept
getting bigger and bigger.
All of a sudden, we were everywhere.
Because we are what we eat,
we are our repressed emotions,
and we are what we declare.
So today, we declare the opening
of Zoe Natural.
Thank you, Leo. And thank you, Maxi.
Do you want to know what else?
For the women,
there will be an entire gallery
for a beauty center.
A whole beauty center.
There were surgeries.
My female coworkers would suddenly come in
with completely different looks.
Or with Mini Coopers.
We are also going to open our first school
for kindergarten and first grade,
so that our children can finally go
to the schools that they truly deserve.
- [man] Bravo!
- A school where there will be no strikes!
[Maximiliano] What Leonardo Cositorto
was creating was an ecosystem.
A community where,
if people were a part of Zoe,
they'd go to the Zoe gym,
they'd eat at the Zoe burger shop.
If they wanted to buy a car,
they could do that too.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Zoe Cash.
We're already at the Zoe market cap,
where you can see that today,
we're worth 20 cents of a dollar.
[Cositorto] It's our own cryptocurrency,
which we have created
after investing more than $4 million.
They were always advertising
about their growth,
talking about how they were going
to explore other countries
because there were more people interested.
In Australia, in Great Britain, in Italy.
Leo, here are the planes for you.
Here they are.
[Cositorto]
We then opened the Futswap in Sweden,
and we also opened the Miami offices.
Leonardo went and bought
soccer teams in Spain,
he bought teams in Paraguay,
and in Thailand.
We also had Deportivo Español.
You must be like a steel door,
a steel arch against goals.
MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER
If you score two goals or more,
Each of you will take home
a 100,000 pesos.
Tomorrow or the day after, you'll get
a virtual wallet with cryptocurrency.
You'll have 55,000 pesos there as a gift.
You can save it
because the company will keep it safe,
but if you want
to exchange that for money, you can.
You know what materials are made of?
Raw material, right?
Do you know what the raw material
of things we cannot see is?
Faith!
Faith is the substance
of all we cannot see.
We've won this game
even before it's begun, okay?
Then we opened Zoe Paradise.
WE ARE CREATING
PARADISE
[Norma] When Zoe Paradise came up,
I was in a group, and Leonardo would say,
"The parcel of land is worth this much
and you can't miss out."
[Cositorto] Hey, how are you?
If you pay for it in cash, it's 54,000.
ZOE PARADISE MEGA PROJECT
And you'll have three parcels
in the metaverse,
which is an investment as well.
You'll see what it generates,
and you'll have first pick.
If you agree, I'll send you to
the payments group
so you can tell us
how you'd like to do it.
[woman] Well, Leo, you tell me.
Is it in cash? In banknotes?
This feels like a whirlwind to me,
but oh well.
VOICE OF VICTIM
I'm following my heart,
and this is where it's taking me.
These are all my savings,
so I'm gonna trust and keep going.
[Cositorto] Zoe Paradise
is a great investment, you'll see.
It was a type of holding company
where you could see that it was not Zoe,
but rather a whole lot
of different companies
that were all behind Zoe.
ZOE APPS - ZOE AIRLINE - ZOE WATER
ZOE CAR - ZOE COLLEGE - ZOE DRUGSTORE
ZOE THEATER - ZOE RADIO
We began seeing that we were backed up
by many business deals that provided us
with a sense of security.
[Cositorto] Well, here we go.
We are about to get on the plane
that will take us to Dubai.
It's gonna be a 28-hour flight altogether.
Come on, check it out.
DUBAI
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
[seabird squawking]
[dreamy music playing]
The world is ruled by love,
so never love money and use people.
Because then,
whatever you gain, you will lose.
If you do it the other way around,
it will multiply.
Yrimia was the one
who said to base the company in Dubai,
because taxes are lower there
than anywhere else in the world.
We came here to set up
the Zoe Dubai company.
And we're also gonna set up Zoe Soccer,
and we want to open up a clinic as well.
[dreamy music playing continuous]
[Maximiliano]
By recommendation of the lawyers,
an accountant, and Yrimia,
Leo needed a trusted person.
When I signed on as vice president,
one of the first things he said to me
was that it wasn't a partnership.
He needed someone he could trust
not to ask him for stocks in the future,
someone who wouldn't ask
for absolutely anything.
Well, here we are in the house
of one of the owners
of a major bank in Dubai.
It's a house with its own private beach.
I just saw Dubai as another experience.
Okay, okay, look at this.
Oh, I don't want to look.
Look at this. Look at what I'm doing!
Look at how we're eating!
You would see them and enjoy it as well
because it was like
you were there with them.
[Cositorto] Out of all of the animals,
leaders should choose to be like camels.
They are the only ones who carry water
so that everyone else
can cross the desert.
[seagulls squawking distantly]
When I told Luis Yrimia, in Dubai,
that it seemed like it would be convenient
for the company to buy a gold mine,
he said it was a very smart business idea.
That's when he introduced me to a person
claiming to be the owner of Sol Petróleo.
This person sold me a percentage
of a gold mine in San Juan,
which was called León,
and also another mine.
LEÓN MINE
And they told me that from that moment on,
I would be receiving
a certain quantity of gold.
PLANTING OUR FLAG IN SAN JUAN.
They valued it at about $500,000.
And for us at that time,
half a day's worth of our resources.
The gold mines existed.
I went personally
to the court of the mines
to verify their existence.
I spoke with the judge while I was there,
and the mines were in
good working condition.
And then Cositorto signed a contract.
This stated that he had to make payments
in installments.
And once the final payment was made,
they would transfer the license
to utilize the mine to the Zoe company.
[Cositorto] They laughed in our faces
when we said that we were going
to back up the currency with gold!
Well, tonight, I can declare it!
We will trade Zoe Cash for gold.
One gram, one coin. One gram, one coin.
GET YOUR FREEDOM WITH ZOE CASH
The final thing that we will be doing,
let's just call it the icing on the cake,
is the acquisition of gold mines.
We have secured the first two mines,
and we are also going
to utilize another mine.
Even though we are not
going to be the owners,
we will be given the rights of extraction.
Pretty soon, we will be bringing
a film crew to the mine
to illustrate how we will be extracting
our first grams of gold.
- [man] Bravo!
- [applause]
Thank you very much.
[man] Let's go!
Everything I'm talking about is tangible.
You can see it and you can touch it.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY
VILLA MARÍA
You cannot buy a gold mine in Argentina.
Not even the area where gold is extracted.
The mines of the most important metals,
such as gold,
belong to the state of Argentina.
There are sometimes concessions
that are granted through bids,
and a percentage
is given to the exploiter,
while the other part
belongs to the state of Argentina.
Yrimia said to me,
"I have an investor from China
willing to invest $100 million
in the company,
in order to exploit the mine."
That way, Zoe Cash
could enter the Chinese market,
and people would be able to buy with it.
I wasn't involved
in the business side of things at all.
[interviewer] Was it all a lie?
That's something only Yrimia knows.
[dramatic music playing]
[water bubbling]
I wanted to tell you
that this Friday and Saturday,
I will be at the ABC Theater.
Don't miss it. You and all your friends.
Coaching, mentoring, and the best business
in the world in your hands.
Ciao.
COLOMBIA
NOVEMBER 2021
[faint applause]
[choral singing]
[woman] How are my people doing?
The night has only just begun.
Because after tonight,
no one will be the same
after leaving this place.
That's why I'd like to ask
for a huge round of applause
for someone who has shone
since getting here,
because everybody loves him.
Max Batista.
[applause]
Maxi! Come here.
[Maximiliano] Good evening!
[Cositorto]
We had an 8,000% growth in 2021,
so our turnover was around
I used to handle a million
or a million and a half dollars each day.
First, I'd like to thank God
for putting me in this place.
And second, I'd like to thank Leo.
[woman] Now, we have another
great inspirational leader,
who has always been
an important presence to us.
The founder...
- The founder...
- ...of Zoe.
...of Zoe.
And who's ready today
to inspire and enchant us.
One more time.
[woman] Leo Cositorto, welcome!
[audience cheers]
[Cositorto] The company had a tendency
which was not to multiply by 8,000%,
but at least by 400%.
So that means that, at that time,
we would make about $2 billion.
Any Colombians in the house?
[crowd cheers]
Long live Colombia!
It wasn't a unicorn, but a double unicorn.
And we're talking about a global scale.
[upbeat music playing]
[Cositorto] Today, we have 64 offices
throughout the world.
And this month,
we have transferred
more than $20 million as earnings
into the hands of the associates
and members of Zoe.
And today,
we are 58,000 people worldwide!
Look at what we're doing here.
We'll need a coliseum next time, won't we?
In the next few years
we are going to create movements!
Civil movements and political movements,
so that tomorrow we can lead one,
two three, four, five, six countries
throughout Latin America.
I'll close with this.
There's a journalist from Villa María.
His name is Sergio.
He sends an email because he begins
noticing that, in Villa María,
people are leaving their traditional jobs.
A secretary, an employee at a bank,
they are leaving their old jobs
that paid $200, $300 a month,
to do what?
[audience] To work for Zoe!
And what's the problem?
I am not afraid of any man!
I fear no man!
[audience cheers]
I will only get down
on my knees before God.
[cheering continuous]
Jesus said,
"And you will do greater things!"
What we have accomplished
together as a team,
are things that not even
the Lord accomplished
when he was on this earth,
But he promised us
that we would accomplish what?
Greater things!
And it's true, greater things are coming!
[typing]
UNMASKING A PYRAMID SCHEME
Beto Mendeleiev,
which is obviously an alias.
I never found out who he was,
and I also never asked.
He was a Twitter user
who began exposing Generation Zoe...
#ZOESCAM
...around October 2021.
He didn't have many followers at the time.
COMPUTER SCIENTIST
I think I remember seeing something,
but didn't think much of it then.
I was busy with other things,
like work and such.
I've worked in research
and computer science
for about three decades now.
And in my free time, as a hobby,
I tweet a lot.
I had already seen
quite a few scams around.
They were supposedly
wonderful business deals
based on cryptocurrency
and other trendy things.
I then stumbled across something
called Generation Zoe,
which turned out to be quite entertaining.
Don't sell your house to invest.
Just put in 500 or a thousand dollars.
Are you broke? Sell the dog!
[Javier] When I started seeing all this
and learning about the world
of Generation Zoe,
I was obviously drawn
to Leonardo Cositorto's persona.
And I thought,
"Where did this guy come from? Who is he?"
And, as I was looking into his history,
t turns out that his father
had been a businessman
in the publishing business.
And then at some point,
back around the early '80s,
he went completely bankrupt.
So he then found his way
out of this situation
by going out to the streets to sell books.
And he would take Leonardo Cositorto
and his brother Guillermo along with him.
So that was how
Leonardo Cositorto learned,
or better yet, he developed
all of his skills as a direct salesman.
He did it with street sales
by going door to door.
[Cositorto] Hey, you're a cop, right?
[man] Yes, sir.
[Cositorto] We're having a clearance sale.
[man] Sales aren't allowed here.
Got it. Don't be mad.
I'm sorry, I didn't know.
I'll speak to the manager right now.
I thought this was all legal.
Is the police station near here?
Two blocks to the left.
- To the left?
- Yes.
- Two blocks away?
- That way.
And you're Corporal Flores?
- How did you know?
- Oh, because of the badge.
- Thank you. I apologize.
- It's okay. Now you know.
Come on, let's go
to the police station now.
Good morning. Is this the police station?
Corporal Flores sent me.
We're having a sale.
[attendees laugh]
- He said... He told me that...
- [laughter and applause]
Good.
[Javier] In the '90s,
Cositorto was basically
a trainer for salespeople.
He was like a chameleon.
He would speak differently to each person
depending on the moment
or place he was in.
But no matter what,
he always had the same speech.
It was about being a revolutionary,
and a successful businessman
who would transform the economy
and create a generation of millionaires.
And at some point, he also dipped his toes
in the world of evangelism.
[Cositorto] He gives and sometimes,
what does He do? He takes.
And He takes in order to do what?
Give again. He gives to...
Basically, what the Catholic Church says
is that if you're poor,
that's a good thing.
The theology of prosperity, however,
says that God actually
wants you to be wealthy.
You're poor because
you're at odds with God.
Get on your knees if necessary
in the name of Jesus,
with all of your heart.
♪ There's no place higher ♪
♪ Or greater than being at your feet ♪
♪ Than being at your feet ♪
At first, it was difficult to believe
that it was true.
How was it possible for someone
to give so much of their money
to these people who were basically
just door-to-door salesmen?
[rock music playing]
DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
[Juliana]
I'd just gotten back from vacation.
It had been a long year.
On my first day back,
I was given papers and told,
"This is Leonardo Cositorto."
My name is Juliana Companys.
I'm the district attorney
in the city of Villa María,
in the province of Córdoba, Argentina.
My legal secretary, Florencia Bortolussi,
and my employees Alejandro Bianco
and Germán Livingston,
came up to me and asked me
to look at something.
They showed me some papers
that said "Zoe" on them,
and I asked what that was.
She told me they'd been investigating them
because they'd noticed,
through social media,
that this scam was exactly the same
as the one with Soluciones Diarias,
which had happened
five years prior in Villa María.
[dramatic music playing]
As we were in the middle of it,
I said we had to build a strong case,
create some structure
because we didn't have any victims yet.
That's when a call
comes through to the court
in which they alert us
of the exact same thing.
We thought Zoe
was a fixed-income security.
This happens a lot in Villa María
because there's a lot of purchasing power,
especially from people
with undeclared income.
They invest in illegal fixed-income
securities for a certain percentage,
then their money is loaned out
and so forth.
So that's when I told Alejandro Bianco
to go to Zoe, here in Villa María,
and to ask them for a loan.
He described it
as some sort of super office,
at least according
to Villa María standards.
"There are lots of computers, Doc,
and they're all typing nonstop,
like tap, tap, tap."
"They took me to the back,
where they had some chairs,
and everyone was drinking coffee."
"They gave me coffee as well."
"The office was really top-notch."
"There's clearly lots of money there."
He asks them for the loan,
and they tell him
that they didn't do that there.
They said that he had to invest $500
in order for him
to obtain a 7.5% profitability.
And if he brought in
his family members as well,
that would add 20% more
per every family member.
[inaudible]
When he comes back, he tells me
it wasn't a fixed-income security.
It was a really bad pyramid scheme.
According to our penal code,
in order for a crime to exist,
there has to be a victim of these scams.
We figured we'd have to wait
for a victim to show up.
WHY WOULD YOU GIVE MONEY
TO A GUY NAMED COSITORTO?
[computer whistles]
What first caught my attention
was the disproportionate
and ridiculous nature
of Zoe's economic offer.
How could a company possibly guarantee
a monthly 7.5% profitability in dollars?
It was clear to me that it was
destined to collapse eventually.
[intriguing music playing]
[Juliana]
Florencia warned me that, on Twitter,
there were two or three users
talking about Cositorto
and suggesting
that this was all a pyramid scheme.
[computer whistles]
THEY ASK WHAT ZOE IS.
LIKE THE MATRIX, BUT COSITORTO'S VERSION.
It has happened to me before,
and also in this case specifically,
that when I take on a subject,
I suddenly become
a point of reference in regards to it,
and that often creates space for others
to contact me and pass on information.
THE SHARP LIVES OFF FOOLS,
FOOLS LIVE OFF THEIR WORK
We obviously saw all of the tweets,
and we were extremely outraged.
We were all very angry.
Our question was, how do they know?
Who are the people
feeding them this information?
And why are they here?
[computer whistles]
WHOEVER PAID IN USD WILL RECEIVE ZOE CASH
It was all about following Cositorto's
daily footsteps through Twitter,
and identifying who was who,
and how they operated.
[Sergio] When my friends on Twitter
started tweeting things out,
I began supporting all of their comments,
and I found support from them as well.
It was like,
"Okay, let's keep going. I'm not alone."
[dramatic music playing]
I became the villain in the story.
People had a lot of faith in Cositorto.
[Cositorto] Hello, Sergio.
I think what you're doing is shameful.
You have shown no mercy,
and you refuse to reap what you sowed.
You caused me some serious damage
because you're manipulating people
through a newspaper that, I suppose,
makes you feel powerful.
Unfortunately,
I will have to take judicial action
against your newspaper,
against you, and your co-op.
Don't take this as a threat.
It's my right to do so.
[Sergio] He was very aggressive,
and he said things
that were frankly out of line
because I was just doing my job.
Meanwhile, he would go to the media
and say the exact opposite.
Most of the schools are just
coaching schools, which is great.
But they were also designed
and created in the last century.
It would be a milestone
in the crypto world,
since currency is driven
by usability and trust.
[Mirian] When I first started seeing Leo
doing interviews on television stations,
I was ecstatic.
I was like, "Look at our leader,
look at our director."
"There he is! Look, Mom!
Change the channel, that's him!"
He would keep going.
He'd buy pages in big Argentinian papers,
and people would think,
"Look, if El Diario Argentino,
which is huge, is saying this,
why believe the Villa María newspaper?"
SPONSORED CONTENT
GENERATION ZOE WAS LICENSED
BY THE NATIONAL SECURITIES COMMISSION
I developed a robot.
[upbeat techno music playing]
And a robot is nothing other than a system
made up of signals responding
to mathematical and statistical models,
to predict how high
and how low the market will go.
ZOE
ROBOT
Rosa María was promising strong bots,
and that's when I started
to disagree with him.
I said, "Leonardo, let's stick
to 7.5% profitability."
"Let's not go higher."
That's when he said,
"I am the owner of this company,
so I'll handle it."
"If I were to make decisions
like you would,
the company would be done."
"That's why I'm the owner and you're not."
[computer whistles]
CHRISTMAS ROBOT
DECEMBER 6TH THROUGH 13TH
[Javier] In December 2021,
they launched the last great investment,
the infamous Christmas bot,
which would supposedly duplicate
all of your money in just three months.
So that's when
an avalanche of money came in.
[somber organ music playing]
[Belén] Just imagine, it was December.
Christmas bonuses, New Year's, holidays.
People were desperate.
I think that must have been
the biggest fund collection
that Zoe ever had with any bots.
That was it.
A snowball that kept growing
as he promised more and more.
And people kept on believing him.
[Belén] More and more illusion,
more fantasy, more wanting, more and more.
It was like a balloon.
It just kept growing and growing, until...
it exploded.
[tape rewinding]
[wind blowing faintly]
[somber organ music playing]
[Cositorto]
While on the cross, Jesus said,
"Forgive them, Father,
for they know not what they are doing."
I could open Twitter right now
and read ten atrocities,
just read them, and that's it.
FUNNY THING ABOUT PYRAMID SCHEMES IS,
SOME PEOPLE DO GET EARNINGS.
Many of our tweets were being written
with a large dose of humor.
It was never about
making fun of any of the victims.
It was only about ridiculing him.
[clucking]
COSITORTO IS THE HEN
THAT LAYS GOLDEN EGGS.
Almost all of the material
we would publish
was made up of footage
produced by them directly.
We would obviously record
the Zoom meetings
that Leonardo Cositorto
would have every single night,
during which he would mostly complain
about paid Twitter users
that were supposedly financed
by the hidden powers
that intended to destroy Zoe.
This is just their style.
These characters
paid for by God knows who.
They even have bots activated,
creating campaigns to spread information
on social media and Twitter.
[Mirian] It really bothered me
because they were messing with something
that was supposed to be ours.
We took it personally.
We started communicating
amongst ourselves.
And then, little by little,
we built up what we decided
to call a "Twitter troop."
I'M 100% ZOE
Our troop would basically
create strategic plans,
and we would tweet
in the middle of the night...
#ZOERESIST
# BESTRONGZOE - #WEAREALLZOE
...before anybody else was tweeting
so it would gain visibility more easily.
We needed to defend the place
that we all had invested in
because if things went badly
for the company,
things would eventually
go badly for us too.
[computer whistles]
#DONOTMESSWITHZOE
JANUARY 2022
[inaudible]
[Belén] Around mid-January,
people obviously came over
to ask about their money.
They wanted to withdraw their money,
and it wasn't there.
And we were the ones who had to face them.
The thing that really began
to make the entire structure fall apart
was that infamous Christmas bot.
[dramatic music playing]
When the time came
to begin making those payments,
the money was gone.
Everybody wanted to cash out,
but the money was all invested
in different kinds of businesses,
in lots of different places.
[Belén] There was someone
who I really trusted there,
so I went to him and I said,
"Tell me the truth,
because I'm the one facing people
and putting myself on the line."
And he said, "You deserve the truth."
That's when he told me
that the money was gone.
They couldn't find the money.
They didn't know what had happened.
I opened the administration
group chat on WhatsApp,
which included Cositorto
and his right-hand men.
And I demanded an explanation.
And the administration said,
"Keep pushing people to invest.
Let's stick with the bots."
"Keep telling people to give their money."
For goodness' sake, answer my question.
I sent them an audio message
where I called them shameless,
and warned them
that I'd tell people what was going on.
So they kicked me out
of the administration group chat.
They kicked me out of all the group chats.
And that's when I sent
my crazy voice messages
to the entire community.
The only culprit here is Cositorto.
He's got all the dough.
I've got voice messages
from the vice president
saying that Leo's the one
with all the cash flow.
THIEVES!
He's the one that has to pay!
JANUARY 8, 2022
Team, we're leaving.
Here comes Maxi. We're off to Uruguay.
From Uruguay to Buenos Aires,
from Buenos Aires to Mexico,
from Mexico to Colombia,
and from Colombia to Buenos Aires.
The year's begun. Fasten your seat belts.
Maxi, come say hi!
[Juliana] I can't remember
which Twitter user in particular
uploaded the video in which they're seen
boarding the private jet plane
going to Uruguay.
So we got to see them, and had that image
of them leaving the country.
[buzzes]
[whirring]
ZOE LEADER LEFT THE COUNTRY
WILL HE COME BACK?
[dramatic music playing]
[Cositorto] Hello, team,
I just wanted to come by
and greet you here from Santo Domingo.
The att*cks against myself
and the organization
have continued since this morning.
You know that these are coming
from a model that has collapsed.
Their system resists and does not allow
for a new business model
of entrepreneurship like ours to run.
We're not gonna stop planting seeds
and sharing opportunities with each other.
It is important that we understand
and support each other,
so that we can take steps forward
as a community,
strengthening the organization.
At that point, we were still trusting Leo,
listening to his side of the story,
and taking his words into account.
He urged us to stay together.
He said that they were trying to divide us
and destroy the company,
and he said that this was expected
in the short term.
But he said that we should be patient,
so up until that moment,
we were still defending and supporting
the entire community.
[crickets chirping]
[Cositorto] Good evening, everyone.
Thank you for being online,
and for responding to the call.
We have around
Amidst these circumstances,
it is extremely important
for all of you to see
how we respond
to these taunts and systemic att*cks.
For example, right now
there's a man on Argentina's social media
whose name is Beto, supposedly.
You can see how he's using
a fake profile picture.
This is what he's posting right now,
and he's here on the Zoom call.
You have no idea who you're engaging with.
We should all learn
about the word "relationship."
Primarily you, Beto,
if that's even your real name.
You should learn how to relate
with your inner self
and heal this hatred inside you,
which is sending a growing company to shit
with your crappy ways.
You've sold yourself to the powers that be
for who knows how much money.
And to all these newspapers
and journalists that are angry at the fact
that a new generation
was born into the world.
[rock music playing]
What's behind this cryptocurrency pastor?
Something? Or nothing at all?
COSITORTO IN THE MIDDLE OF CONTROVERSY
[Mirian] It became more and more frequent,
until it got to a point
where Generation Zoe
was mentioned every day.
It felt like Generation Zoe was being
called out a thousand times a day,
along with Leonardo Cositorto.
He set up a gigantic machine
of scams through Generation Zoe.
There have always been scammers.
We all started feeling
a tremendous amount of pressure
because it was all over the media now.
They were all talking about it
and referring to it as a scam.
It's amazing how right at this moment
on TV, for instance,
they're talking about scams and scandal.
I compare it to having a grocery store.
If a new grocery store opens
a block away from yours,
and they post signs saying you sell
expired vegetables and rotten meat,
then they start a full-on media attack,
there comes a point where the local people
won't buy from you anymore,
and the business will eventually collapse.
[Cositorto] Hello, leaders.
Good morning and good afternoon.
I want to say hi to all of you,
and I want to share some key points
that I believe should be very clear.
This is mainly about the steps
we're gonna take today and tomorrow.
It's very important...
Instead of coming to terms
with things and saying,
"Okay, this is it. We lost the money."
"We don't know how to pay back
the people that first invested."
Their way out was to relaunch a new offer
that was even more tempting
and offered even more earnings.
Become a part of this one and only bot,
the only one left.
There is no other bot
than this quarterly progressive bot
that offers 20, 25, 30, and 35%.
LAST ROBOT 4 PROGRESSIVE MONTHS
[Mirian] It was our way of supporting Zoe,
a way of showing our vote of confidence
and trust in the company,
because by this time,
they didn't have the liquidity
or the needed cash flow
to pay for memberships for everybody.
So we decided
to go all in on this last bot,
because it looked like
it was going to be our last chance.
There wouldn't be another.
[somber music playing]
LAST ROBOT!
CLICK HERE
[Norma] My main concern
was the need to procure money.
It didn't matter how much we had.
In those final moments, it was clear
that the most important thing
was to get money in.
That should have been a warning sign.
It should have alerted us and made us
realize that things weren't working.
There was skepticism.
[tape rewinding]
[small mechanical clicking]
[lulling music playing]
[Belén] At that point, there were people
coming in to pressure us,
and they'd tell us off horribly.
Some of my coworkers
just couldn't take it anymore.
They couldn't handle the strong emotions
we were having to deal with.
They didn't want to come to work.
[dramatic music playing]
[Belén] There were cars
that were following us to our houses.
It started to get really scary.
This entire situation
had turned into something very heavy.
Coworkers were being threatened.
Some of them were in the police force,
and one of my female coworkers
was receiving nasty threats.
[ominous music playing]
Things got a lot uglier,
and there were acts of v*olence.
Some of the victims
went to get their money.
They came to the offices in Nuñez,
and they were armed.
And the whole thing explodes
when they close the offices
in Villa María.
[feedback drones]
VICTIM'S VOICE
[man] I'll keep it simple.
I'm not going to wait for the company.
Until you give back what you took
from me and my friends, I will never stop.
Got it?
You keep stalling and telling me
to sell this and to sell that.
Telling lies and more lies.
I'm not a kid anymore.
If you don't care about your family,
yourself, or anything else,
then I have no problem exposing you.
You don't even have the courage
to just pick up the phone
and make a simple phone call,
you m*therf*cking son of a bitch!
["I Wanna Be Your Dog"
by The Stooges playing]
You have time until the 16th.
I came for the 30,000 bucks I put here.
♪ So messed up, I want you here ♪
[man] I am done. I'm tired of it.
VICTIM'S VOICE
They managed to get into the offices.
♪ In my room, I want you here ♪
[man] They tore the place apart,
they hit people,
and some of them were armed.
#GIVETHEMONEYBACK
♪ Now we're gonna be face-to-face ♪
They made deals with five
who were more enraged than us.
#ZOETHIEVES
♪ And I'll lay right down
In my favorite place ♪
They took it,
and here we are with no money.
[man 1] Everyone here
just wants our money returned to us.
ZOE DISMANTLES NEW OFFICE IN ALICANTE
REPORTS OF PYRAMID SCHEME
♪ Now I wanna be your dog ♪
ZOE SPAIN: FROM LEADER'S
"EXPONENTIAL GROWTH"
TO "I DON'T HAVE A DIME" IN JUST ONE YEAR
YRIMIA: "THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT KNOW WHERE
ZOE'S MONEY IS ARE COSITORTO AND BATISTA"
[man 2] Not even a follow-up call.
Don't make me come for you at your house.
[man 3] Everything's empty here.
There's nothing left. They took it all.
#ZOESCAM
There are no computers, there's no money.
The safes are empty. Not a single peso.
We worked on our own for the last week,
without the leaders.
We closed on February 14th.
All of a sudden, the office in Villa María
closed up without a warning.
They put up a sign with phone numbers,
and it said,
"Call this number. We're gone."
[Sergio] Some of the company's investors
would come to the newspaper
asking us what to do.
To be honest, we weren't exactly sure
what we should tell them to do.
The only thing that we were able
to suggest doing
was reaching out
to the district attorney directly
because we knew that she was already
working on this case.
[dramatic music playing]
[Juliana] At that point, we already
had our case pretty well established.
We had our arrest warrants
and search warrants
because two people
had already identified the organization.
We even confirmed
the place of residence for each of them.
We were waiting
for the first victim to come forward.
The first victim finally came to us
on February 17th.
There were actually three victims
that came forward.
[cell phone vibrates]
They told us they hadn't been paid.
[suspenseful music playing]
What we decided to do
immediately from there
is order the detainment of the Álvarezes.
We already knew that Cositorto and Batista
weren't in the country,
so we decided to order the searches
on their other confirmed
places of residence.
SEARCH
When we got to the addresses,
no one was there.
They were empty.
[sirens wailing distantly]
[Juliana] They had already gone in
and emptied out the Zoe office
in Villa María.
[camera shutters click]
Why did they do that?
Because they knew
that there was a federal police officer
who also worked as Claudio Álvarez's
personal bodyguard.
[phone line ringing]
JUAN GOMEZ
WHATSAPP AUDIO
When we issued the search warrants,
this federal police officer
warned Claudio Álvarez.
There's record of a call
at 2:30 a.m. saying,
"They're going to search
your house tomorrow. Leave."
"Give me my money back and go."
He demanded they return the money
he had invested in Zoe, and so they fled.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter] A series of searches
have been carried out today in Villa María
due to fraud reports
filed against this organization.
These were ordered
by District Attorney Juliana Companys.
[Juliana] That happened on a Friday.
On Monday, an international arrest warrant
was issued for Batista and Cositorto.
[news sting playing]
ALERT
[news anchor] Breaking news.
Right at this very moment,
the international arrest warrant
made against the one and only
Leonardo Nelson Cositorto has been issued.
For us,
that was the first time we had issued
an international arrest warrant.
We hadn't had that pleasure, so to speak.
So we got in touch with Interpol.
We didn't know exactly where they were.
We knew Maxi Batista
had left before the arrest warrant.
He'd gone to Mexico,
and from Mexico to Spain.
MADRID
SPAIN
[interviewer]
Maxi, did you ever get the feeling
that Leo let go of your hand
and left you to your own devices?
BATISTA AGREED TO AN INTERVIEW
WHILE BEING A FUGITIVE ON MARCH 18TH, 2022
I'm not in touch with Leo, but I'd like
to know what he thinks of this.
What's he thinking?
What was he thinking when he said,
"Everything's fine, keep going"?
Because, well, I...
I keep on wondering,
how can this be happening, you know?
Where there's division, there's chaos.
And what happened in the company was,
there were a lot of people
with a lot of power.
And those people with power,
they were the ones
who manipulated everything.
The businesses, the money.
And, in handling all of it,
they would take a lot of money.
A lot of people stole,
and there were many betrayals.
I'm living my worst nightmare.
I've never felt what I'm feeling.
I know what dying's like
because
I felt like I died.
So I started to...
live differently because I understood
you can be dead and alive all at once.
And I felt that my soul had died.
Four people are under arrest
in the Zoe case.
Four were detained
after turning themselves in
at the Villa Carlos Paz Judicial Unit.
To this date, four out of the seven
fugitives on this case
have already turned themselves in.
These are Mr. Claudio Álvarez,
Ivana Álvarez,
uh, Schamme Silvio, and Fermani Silvia.
[Javier] Cositorto tried to pretend
he was back in Colombia.
He posted a picture on his Instagram.
You could see him wearing
some very expensive sunglasses
while swimming in a pool.
WE'LL RISE BACK UP IN APRIL
He tagged it
in a certain spot in Colombia.
But when he had previously posted,
there was a Zoom meeting
in which the background
was very similar to a cabin complex
where they were supposed to build
one of Zoe's relaxation centers.
So we noticed similarities
between these backgrounds,
and we started thinking
that Cositorto might be hiding there.
And he did not like this at all.
He came out quite angry, visibly angry,
on a Zoom call at the exact same location.
Hey, team. Well, I have to make this video
to show you this,
so you can realize the place I'm in
is nowhere near Cartagena de Indias.
I'm not that stupid, I'm not an idiot.
So don't underestimate me.
I'm not about to be somewhere
they can easily find me.
Besides, you're putting
people's lives at risk.
Stop lying and slandering.
You've been harassing this community
for over six months.
There are two things
that have an impact on social media.
Outrage and humor.
I prefer to take things with humor
and joke around.
And clearly, Beto Mendeleiev
prefers that too.
WE ARE THE NEW GENERATION
[male coach] We are going to launch
the first point, which is the lands.
These lands, the legendary lands.
[Javier] One day,
they left the Zoom whiteboard open,
and therefore,
anybody was able to draw on it.
[male coach] Guys, would you please
disable the whiteboard?
[Javier]
They drew everything from pyramids,
penises, and wrote "Beto lives"
because at that point,
Beto Mendeleiev's account
had been shut down.
[male coach] You're sharing the screen,
so you can disable it.
[man 1] No, no. I'm not.
I'm not the one sharing it.
It's being shared
by somebody on James' team.
[male coach] Thank you for being here.
- [man 2] Thank you.
- Despite the sabotage.
[man 3] Thank you, yes.
Then later, during another presentation
on a different day,
someone managed to get on camera
with an avatar of an Egyptian pharaoh.
[Cositorto] Please authorize Camilo León.
Cami, go ahead, you have the floor.
[Camilo] Hey, Leonardo.
I don't really know what else to say
that hasn't already been said before.
And if anyone else
has anything they want to add...
[menacing music playing]
[Juliana]
Cositorto said he was in Colombia,
because over Zoom
he would say he was in Medellín.
But his phone was pinging off
in the Dominican Republic.
Even though he was using a NAT gateway
to log into Zoom through the dark web,
which is an underground internet network
that is not visible to the average person,
and he would set it up to Spain,
as he usually did,
his cell phone was being flagged
in the Dominican Republic.
He didn't activate NAT
while using his phone.
So it gave us his exact physical location.
COSITORTO CHARGED WITH FRAUD
AND UNLAWFUL ASSOCIATION
We are now in direct communication
with Leonardo Cositorto,
who is an active fugitive.
Cositorto, good evening.
I was wondering if you're able to tell us
what your location is at the moment.
How's it going, Gustavo?
Good evening, how are you?
It's nice to see you, and here we are.
- Please tell us...
- At the moment,
I'm in the Dominican Republic.
Why are you a fugitive of the Argentinian
justice system, Cositorto?
I'm not a fugitive
because I didn't flee from anywhere.
I was traveling.
I was on tour.
We're present in 21 countries.
[brooding music playing]
[Juliana] As for Maxi Batista,
we knew that he had been
communicating with his daughter.
We issued a search warrant
to raid his daughter's house,
and he was actually
just talking on the phone with her
when we knocked on her door.
We ordered her to hang up the phone
because we were performing the search.
At that moment,
Batista's brother shows up and tells us
that Batista did not want
his daughter to go through this.
It was that same day
that he decided to come back to Argentina
and turn himself in.
[reporter 1]
There he is, Maximiliano Batista.
MARCH 21ST 2022
Are you going
to say something, Maximiliano?
Is Cositorto turning himself in?
[reporter 2] The money, where's the money?
[dramatic music playing]
[Juliana] As for Cositorto,
what were their next steps going to be?
Interpol personnel,
aided by Dominican Republic's Interpol,
began checking
the backgrounds on his recordings.
Those backgrounds they saw
were characteristic
of many beach house rentals.
So they started looking at beach houses
through a rental agency
to figure out if there was a house
that looked similar
to the house he was in.
They showed me the video,
and there it was.
It was the exact same house that
they had found through the rental company.
JUAN DOLIO
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
[reporter] Cositorto's attorney in Córdoba
states that his defendant
is willing to come to justice.
But they demand the district attorney
guarantee him certain privileges,
such as maintaining his freedom
and clarification of the crimes
he's being accused of committing.
[laid-back music playing]
[shower running]
[laid-back music continues playing]
[vibrating]
[police radio squawking]
[waves crashing]
[Juliana] He kept moving
to a different location
every three to five days.
He always remained
within the beaches in Juan Dolio,
but he would stay in different places.
At that point in time, the authorities
were closing in on Cositorto.
It was only a matter of hours
before they would finally be able
to confirm the exact location
where he was hiding.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Juliana] So Interpol
does the same thing all over again.
They tune into all
of his daily Zoom calls,
which he had made public,
and they find the exact same house.
Dominican Republic personnel
enter in the early morning.
[camera shutters clicking]
The people from the Dominican Republic
tell us they were very surprised
by what they saw.
They find him with another person,
a man, who was responsible
for helping him rent
the different locations.
I doubt he ever thought
I'd be able to arrest him.
APRIL 4TH 2022
We woke up on April 4th
to the news that Leonardo Cositorto
had been arrested
in the Dominican Republic.
That's when our eyes went,
"Wow! What happened?"
We realized he was really a fugitive.
If Interpol detains someone in that way,
they are usually criminals.
So there was definitely something else
going on that we did not know about.
[sirens wailing distantly]
[Mirian] He was extradited to Argentina,
and we saw him
get brought in in handcuffs.
He looked like
a completely different man to me.
We couldn't believe
what we were seeing with our own eyes.
And that's when the veil
began to come off, you know?
[tape rewinding]
DISTRICT ATORNEY'S OFFICE
[man] In this provincial court
at Villa María's center,
Leonardo Cositorto is testifying
before district attorney Juliana Companys.
The district attorney,
Juliana Companys, detains you.
She abuses her power,
abuses preventative custody,
and then says she's taking you to trial
where you'll get five, eight, ten years.
But if you declare yourself guilty,
if you raise your hand
and accept the facts,
she'll set you free in two to four years.
During my first encounter with him, he...
He was incredibly angry.
He faces me, and points at me like this.
I tell him he needs to respect me
and that he should put his finger down.
And if he respects me, I'll respect him.
He was fuming and said it was my fault
that his company, his mega company,
had fallen apart.
They dragged my name through the mud.
They slandered me.
They practically sanctioned
the death of my reputation.
I think that a year ago,
I could have been stabbed on the street,
I didn't keep anybody's money.
Mr. Cositorto has always
maintained his position
of being a victim of the system.
Not only a victim of the economic system,
but also of the judicial system.
[Juliana] Mr. Leo Cositorto...
Sorry, Leonardo Cositorto,
has plead guilty.
He was charged with 176 counts of fraud,
and one for unlawful association.
[Cositorto]
Your politics, your corrupt businessmen,
the corrupt media that sells out,
and the legal system.
Those are the real frauds in Argentina.
- [reporter] You're not guilty?
- Those four things.
I am one of the victims
in this whole story.
[dramatic music playing]
[Juliana] In regards to his trading,
we discovered
that it was actually only a demo.
In reality, there was never
any actual trading.
Any broker can represent graphically
what is going on in the market.
What yields returns for a broker
is making sure that the benefits
represented on-screen
are available to be withdrawn.
It's safe to say now
that what we were seeing in the Zoe broker
was just a simulation.
- How many people do you represent?
- We have 20 victims and counting.
I have my entire team working on this.
What are their demands from Cositorto?
Well, what they're asking for
is their money back, of course.
- How much money did they put in?
- Some put in 5,000 or $8,000.
And there's one that put in $70,000.
[host] Dollars?
I invested $3,000 in Zoe,
We each put in 6,000 euros.
I put in $8,000.
That was for the Christmas bot,
and 500 for a trust to start out.
And I've got friends
that invested up to $200,000.
[woman] Colombia, Peru, there's Ecuador,
the United States,
there's Mexico, Guatemala, Spain.
- And also Germany.
- From Germany?
We estimate that, out of the $120 million
that the total fraud was worth,
only 10% of that amount was actually
put into the legitimate market
and reflected in movements
within the banking system.
The rest of the amount
was put into the informal market,
and also into virtual wallets.
That money is in different tax havens,
where it can be reinvested
and there are no regulations over it.
Considering all of the countries
that they were present in,
I believe that a modest number
would be around $250 million.
If anyone tells me
that it was actually 400,
it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Mr. Cositorto considers
both his business and what he did
to be valid.
He claims that he can demonstrate as such,
although he has not been able
to do that yet in a legal sense.
His lawyers have not
turned in any material
that could prove that this is true,
that the company
made this much from trading,
and this amount from investments.
He has not provided anything.
And we have conclusive evidence
against him, which he tries to refute,
but he lacks arguments
and he ends up nowhere.
[dramatic music playing]
[small mechanical clicking]
[Javier] I'm often asked
why I keep persisting with this.
Why do I still care if Zoe has fallen?
For Cositorto,
nobody will ever believe in him.
No one will ever give him money again.
But there are many
similar scams out there,
so I hope that this story
can serve as an example
to create awareness in people,
so that they're more careful.
And the next time that someone
comes offering a miraculous investment
with an impossible return,
they can remember
something called Generation Zoe,
and a man named Cositorto.
[fan blades whooshing]
[Juliana] Since the pandemic,
scams like these have grown exponentially.
Especially virtual scams like this one.
The sentences are usually very mild,
so nothing really happens.
Many criminals just walk out freely,
even though they might have
scammed people for millions of dollars.
At this time, there is not a legitimate
or strong enough sanction
that will keep them
from doing it again in the future.
[Sergio] I believe that the possibility
of being deceived
exists in each and every one of us.
And there will always
be an organization similar to this one
trying to exploit our weak spots
so that they can lure us in.
Throwing a line out to us
and then waiting for us to take the bait,
because they know
what position to put us in
to make us bite.
[metal creaking]
[wistful music playing]
ICE CREAM - JUICE
[Raquel]
The story of Zoe was a roller coaster.
Because at first,
it was very exciting.
But then, I also felt a
huge sense of frustration.
And there was no way
of turning back.
[Belén] It felt something like,
I don't know, it felt something like...
a heartbreak.
It felt like my trust had been broken.
Like I was cheated out of my dreams,
and the illusions
that filled me with life.
It was all gone.
[Norma] I think we all went
from love to hate at first.
Then anger, first at myself.
I was angry and kept wondering,
"How had I fallen for this?" You know?
I felt terrible. Then I got angry at Leo.
EVERY BALL TURNED HAS A PRIZE
[Mirian] There was an atmosphere
of abandonment, despair,
anguish, and sadness.
A lot of people were scared.
Others were depressed.
Many people attempted su1c1de.
There were broken families,
broken marriages.
People that had
invested their inheritances, their homes,
they didn't have a place to live anymore.
They had literally nothing left.
COSITORTO GIVE BACK THE MONEY
WE WANT JUSTICE
[Raquel] To me,
it makes no sense for any person
who has a minimal sense of humanity
to commit these
merciless actions towards others.
COSITORTO
GIVE US BACK OUR MONEY
It takes a sociopath.
BOUWER PRISON
CÓRDOBA, ARGENTINA
[dramatic music playing]
[Maximiliano] I don't feel responsibility
for what happened.
A company that is constantly
att*cked and hurt?
How can it hold on?
How can it be reliable?
I never thought that Zoe was a scam.
Not even now.
I believe that the system
and the world played a cruel trick on us.
And I believe that...
I'm paying for that trick being here.
[dramatic music continues]
[Cositorto] To the victims,
I can say that I'm sorry
and tell them that by June 2024,
if they allow me to work here,
if I have access to a public phone,
I can give it all back to them
in one to three years.
I know I'm capable
because it wouldn't be the first time.
I became a millionaire at 24.
I will simply keep going, time will pass.
Of course, I would love
to be 35 years old again,
but I'm 53.
How long is this gonna last?
I don't know, but I am never
going to raise my hand
and take responsibility
for something I did not do.
The main accused parties
in the Generation Zoe case in Villa María,
Leonardo Cositorto, Maximiliano Batista,
Claudio Álvarez and Silvia Fermani
are in prison awaiting trial.
Rosa María González Rincón is on the run.
Luis Yrimia is in Dubai.
The Zoe case has dozens additional
accused around the world.
Many of them were prosecuted.
A lot of them are still working
for MLM companies or created their own.
["Vida Acuática" by Kita Pena playing]
[music fades]
Illusions for Sale: The Rise and Fall of Generation Zoe (2024)
Moderator: Maskath3