Prepared in 2017, the first alert about the financial transactions of Glaidson Acácio dos Santos, the “bitcoin pharaoh”, was not limited to describing the inflow and outflow of R$ 18 million from his account at Banco do Brasil in Cabo Frio (RJ). ) that year, according to the Federal Police.
“Client demonstrates suspicious behavior, always pleasant to the extreme. Never changes (even if dissatisfied with some situation), tries to demonstrate an above-normal education”, says the statement sent to Coaf (Council for Control of Financial Activities).
That year was something of a transition for Glaidson. He would be the last one still living in Praia do Siqueira, a poor neighborhood in Cabo Frio (RJ), an address that, for the bank, reinforced suspicions about its activities.
“According to the client’s allegations, his movement comes from his activity as a financial intermediary in the bitcoin market, even though the analyzed person resides in a region known as one of the most active drug trafficking points in the municipality”, says the alert.
In August of that year, he purchased an apartment in a modern building in the city for R$380,000. The new alert to Coaf in 2018 highlighted the rise.
“A sudden rise in the client’s standard of living has been observed in the last year, having recently moved to an apartment building in an upscale neighborhood.”
At that time, Glaidson was already the owner of GAS Consultoria, through which he began to offer investors a monthly income of 10%, supposedly from the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies.
Over nine years, the structure created by the former waiter and former pastor of the Universal Church and his collaborators attracted more than 67 thousand customers in 13 Brazilian states and in seven other countries.
For the Federal Public Ministry, it is a criminal organization to commit the crimes of maintaining a financial institution without authorization, fraudulent management and irregular trading of securities.
The suspicion is that the income from investments in cryptocurrencies was not enough to support the return promised by Glaidson. The scheme, according to the MPF, depended on the deposit of new customers to fulfill the agreement with the old ones. The practice is known as financial pyramiding.
The businessman was arrested in August in Operation Kryptos. He and 16 other people became defendants in the Federal Court.
Messages found on Glaidson’s cell phone, seized by the Federal Police on the day of his arrest, show another face of the “extremely pleasant” man. They indicate a businessman irritated with competitors in the city, which came to be called “New Egypt”, due to the various pyramid schemes.
“Fuck them and everyone who enters [sic] on the way. I don’t want 15%. […] Whoever pays 15% pays 10% and has better management. Now, coming to try to pull off customers is not going to work,” Glaidson wrote to a contributor about a competitor.
For the police, the messages also show orders that at least two competitors be killed.
He was denounced on charges of ordering the death of businessman Nilson Alves da Silva, who survived the attack, and youtuber and trader Wesley Pessano, who was not so lucky, in March and August 2021, respectively. Glaidson is investigated for another attempted murder, which took place in June of the same year.
From the “above-normal-educated” client described to Coaf in 2017 to the alleged mastermind of murders in 2021, four years of sudden enrichment and successive alerts have passed that cornered the “bitcoin pharaoh”.
From a poor background, Glaidson served as a pastor at Universal in Venezuela, where he met his wife, Mirelis Zerpa, currently a fugitive.
She is suspected of being the intellectual mastermind of the scheme, having worked in the cryptocurrency market in Venezuela and being mentioned in internet forums as an organizer of financial pyramids.
Upon returning to Brazil, Glaidson worked as a waiter at kiosks in Cabo Frio and at a resort in Búzios, a neighboring resort. He says that in 2012 he started investing in cryptocurrencies and attracting clients – most of them co-workers, former pastors and Universal faithful.
The first record of transactions in this market observed in the investigations is from December 2014, when he opened an account at Foxbit, a cryptocurrency broker.
It was also in 2014 his last employment relationship, as a waiter. In that year, its financial movement was modest: R$ 62,091 in credits and R$ 62,966 in debits. The volume multiplied by 12 in the following year, dropped by 20% in 2016 and, since then, has not stopped growing.
Until 2017, Glaidson signed contracts with his clients as an individual. The scheme became professional in June 2018, says the MPF, when it created GAS.
By then, the “Pharaoh” had already received alerts that his activities were considered suspicious.
Foxbit closed its account in February 2018 for lack of proof of income to justify the movement with cryptocurrencies.
In May of that year, the businessman was also advised by a legal-accounting consulting firm about the need to submit his work to the Central Bank.
In April 2019, another alert, made by an accountant, classified the legal structure of the business as “extremely fragile”, “exposed” and with “absurd error”. In response, Glaidson complained about the demands to regularize.
“These are things that are impossible to have. That’s what we’re talking about here through these audios [é] to arrive at the best scenario. If we are going to talk to three or four other people, then we should ask for the identity of Pedro Álvares Cabral, or, at least, that of Satoshi Nakamoto [pseudônimo da pessoa ou grupo que criou o bitcoin]”, stated Glaidson in audio sent to a contributor to GAS about the criticism made by the accountant.
Days before this alert, the CVM (Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission) received the first complaint about the activities of GAS. They accumulated over the course of that year.
One of the whistleblowers became a witness for the MPF in the investigation. He described how the GAS team responded to his inquiries about the deal.
“I showed them a calculation [apontando] that, if I had invested R$ 100 [mil], R$ 200 thousand, in a matter of five or ten years I would have more than the United States GDP or global GDP due to the effects of compound interest”, said the witness.
“The answer was: ‘Trust me, you need to study more. We’ve been here for eight years. Come and see it’, was the answer,” she said.
The witness exaggerated when comparing the return on an investment of R$ 200 thousand in ten years with the North American GDP, of US$ 20.9 trillion in 2020 (about R$ 115.5 trillion). However, the value would reach R$ 18.5 billion in the period if the 10% monthly earnings were always reinvested, as allowed by GAS, according to the witness.
The CVM saw signs of a financial pyramid, but did not act because it saw no interference in the securities market. The complaints were forwarded to the Public Ministry.
The investigation began as banks closed GAS accounts on suspicion of wrongdoing. The reports from bitcoin agencies and brokers were piling up on Coaf. The federal agency’s report on Glaidson, his wife and two of the couple’s businesses is 318 pages long with 172 reports of suspicion.
While the alerts remained under wraps, the “Pharaoh” advertised his services across the country. With simple language and soft speech, he attracted drivers to the business, civil servants, lawyers and businessmen.
In one of his presentations, he defined cryptocurrencies as follows: “They are Pelé peeing the bed. With great talent, but up ahead, a war will stop.”
Among his clients were actor Rafael Portugal, from Porta dos Fundos, the former superintendent of the Ministry of Health in Rio de Janeiro, Jonas Roza, and even one accused of being part of a militia in the state.
In 2020, the declared assets of Glaidson to the Revenue reached R$ 60 million. According to the MPF, he also omitted from the tax authorities accounts held in Portugal and the United States.
The former waiter went on to carry out a series of social actions in Cabo Frio, which fueled comments in the city that he planned to run for deputy. Glaidson’s closest political link, however, was his sister, a former advisor to the Legislative Assembly in the office of Dr. Serginho (PSL-RJ), currently state secretary. He said he didn’t know about the relationship.
Suspicions about Glaidson’s activities became public in October 2020, when the Bitcoin Portal published a report showing that GAS’ activities resembled a financial pyramid. Weeks later, the same website published the CVM’s analysis of the case.
Nilson, the competitor who was attacked in March, went on to say in the city that the former waiter would be arrested at any moment. The complaint against the businessman and five other people for the attempted murder states that Glaidson had him killed because he was upset with the rumors and the effect on his business.
In the period in which, according to the complaint, he planned the murder, the businessman donated R$ 21 million to Universal. She received a total of BRL 72 million from Glaidson and GAS between 2020 and 2021. The church went to court asking Glaidson to present the origin of the money and stated that it asked for donations to be stopped.
The siege against Glaidson continued to close. In April 2021, the PF seized R$7 million in cash from a couple who worked for GAS. The businessman testified and denied running a financial pyramid. He stated that his company provided “trader outsourcing” service.
In June, the Federal Revenue Service seized jewelry and money from Glaidson and Mirelis at the Guarulhos airport. The PF began to follow in the couple’s footsteps.
In August, he was mentioned in reports on TV Globo’s Fantástico program as one of the members of “Novo Egito”. Phone taps show that he complained to his security guards for not tying up the journalist who sought him out at the company’s headquarters.
Glaidson recorded a video after the reports. He stated that he did not “agree with financial pyramids” and denied involvement in the attack against Nilson, with whom he said he had an “excellent relationship”.
He also offered to help authorities investigate companies that he believed were participating in fraud in the city.
“GAS is an open book for the authorities. We are even here to teach this market so that the authorities can arrest every scammer and fraudster existing in our country,” he said.
In a press release at the time, he stated that the closing of his bank accounts was a reaction “caused by the competition that GAS Consultoria imposes on the products offered by financial institutions”.
The company also said that it “has solid legal arguments to refute the allegations made, able to demonstrate the absolute lawfulness and regularity of its activities, and the absence of injury to anyone.”
Glaidson was arrested days after he posted the defense video. His company kept up to date, until then, the payment to the customers.
Demonstrations in Cabo Frio and Rio de Janeiro, in front of the Federal Court, were organized asking for his release. The protests closed one street in each city, but there is no estimate of the public. They lost breath after the murder charges.
Hundreds of clients flooded the Courts with requests for restitution of the money invested, currently blocked by order of the 3rd Federal Criminal Court. Lawyer Paulo Nicholas, who represents an association created by GAS clients, says that the entity has about 2,000 members and another 8,000 are looking for resources to join.
From jail, Glaidson released a letter in December last year in which he regrets not being able to fulfill his commitments.
“I am writing this letter with a broken heart to know that for almost three months you have not received your income,” he says.
“Never in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that this could happen. That I would be wrongfully imprisoned, that we would be banned from paying money that contractually belongs to you, that we would see a story of nearly a decade of hard work thrown into the mud, without ever having harmed anyone.”
Sought after, the lawyer Nélio Machado, who defends Glaidson, did not return the contact of the report.
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