A Girona court has authorized the first payouts to victims of an alleged Spanish investment fraud, using money recovered after UK gambling operators were scrutinized over the suspect’s betting activity.
According to Casino.org, about 200 people who handed money to Iban Juvanteny Gómez will initially receive around 38% of the sums the court has accepted as their losses. The recovered fund includes more than €6 million transferred to Spanish judicial authorities in late April 2021.
Prosecutors allege that Juvanteny posed as an experienced financial professional and presented himself as a Barclays broker, promising high returns to friends, relatives and other contacts in his hometown of Girona. The scheme is said to have run from 2012 to 2019 and to have involved more than 200 people and about €15 million.
The alleged fraud began to unravel in 2019, when complaints reached the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police force. Juvanteny surrendered in April that year.
Police later found that he had spent substantial sums through UK online casinos and sportsbooks. A joint investigation involving Mossos, Europol and West Yorkshire Police established that he had gambled several million pounds in Britain, which prompted the UK Gambling Commission to examine multiple operators for possible regulatory breaches linked to his activity.
After more than two years of cross-border cooperation, West Yorkshire Police transferred more than €6 million to judicial authorities in Girona in late April 2021. The money was held for possible repayment to victims if Spanish courts approved it.
The recovered cash was reported to stem from sanctions imposed on gambling businesses after failures in anti-money-laundering controls. The operators from whom the money was recovered were not publicly identified in the report.
Juvanteny has not yet stood trial, and no trial date has been fixed. Unresolved procedural matters could still delay proceedings until 2028, while the remaining losses have not been recovered.
