ROSARIO.- In this city there is a parallel world for finances. Caves where money is mixed, in a salad of bills in which it is complex to discern and establish its origin that is blurred. This dark universe is part of the history of a city, where grain smuggling and then the need for drug trafficking to invest money in that labyrinth where no records remain.
The city rosarina accumulates a history of financial fraud that has no equivalent in any other city in the country. In recent weeks, two new chapters have been added to a saga that has been going on for years and that left hundreds of savers without their money: the arrest of Guido Garayformer advisor to the Cofyrco cave, and the request for seven years in prison for the stockbroker Pablo Arcamone. They are the latest names on a list that includes long-time operators, grain brokers and directors of firms that were once a reference in the local market.
Garay was arrested on Wednesday by order of prosecutor Georgina Pairola, who charged him with two scams for a total of close to $130,000. The financier was detained for the indictment hearing and slept one night behind bars, but He was released the next day after posting bail of $150,000 arranged by his defense attorney.Carlos Varela.
The three facts attributed to him by the prosecution reveal a modus operandi based on the building of personal trust and subsequent systematic procrastination. The first involves a businesswoman who owns the firm Lindor SAwho entrusted him with a BMW to perform a mechanical service, according to Rosario3. Garay never returned the vehicle: he appeared before a car intermediary, Jerónimo G., as the company’s representative and He sold the vehicle to a third party for $28,000.. When Lindor management confronted him, he denied the existence of the sale and persisted in his evasion. The company filed a criminal complaint against him.
The second case dates back to the time of Cofyrco, a cave that operated in the heart of Rosario and was the target of investigations that still persist in federal jurisdiction for drug money laundering.
According to the case, an investor had given Garay $50,000 for financial placements when the cave was still operating. After the outbreak of the scandal, in 2021, the relationship continued in the new offices that Garay opened in the Minetti Palace, meters from the Rosario Stock Exchange.
But the agreed interests stopped arriving. Garay responded that they were capitalized and dodged each claim. pressed, signed a promissory note for $100,000 −double the original debt− which, according to prosecutor Pairola, had no other purpose than to delay compliance and for the victim to stop claiming. He never returned the capital.
The third episode involves a saver who arrived in Garay in April 2022 on the recommendation of a person in her closest circle. He successively gave him sums in dollars for currency exchange operations, first at the Minetti Palace and then at an office on 1300 Santa Fe Street. Garay even offered to keep part of the money in his personal safe deposit box, arguing the shortage of boxes available in the banks, which reinforced the relationship of trust.
In 2023 he acknowledged having a fixed term in his possession in the name of the victim, the amount of which grew with new contributions until reaching $52,000. When the woman tried to withdraw her money, she received the same evasions. In 2024, Garay signed another promissory note acknowledging the debt, but never returned a cent. The saver reported it with the sponsorship of lawyers Pablo Bedouret and Bárbara Reynoso.
It is not the first time that Garay faces Justice. In September 2020, when the police raided the Cofyrco offices in the Rosario downtown, investigators found 175 foreign identity documents that were used to buy dollars in the official market and resell them in parallel. A “curler”.
Garay was among those charged with money laundering derived from the crime of Marcelo “Coto” Medranoa drug trafficker linked to the Newell’s brava gang. In December 2021, he avoided sentencing by accepting a suspended trial: he paid a fine of $35,552 and agreed to complete 400 hours of community work. Judicial sources indicated that he never fully complied with the probation.
The Cofyrco cause is emblematic to explain the operation of the Rosario caves. The financial company was not registered with the Central Bank to operate in currency exchange. Its directors − Patricio Carey, Fernando Vercesi, Teodoro Fracassi, Ignacio De Cesari and Sergio Zapata − were prosecuted in federal jurisdiction for unauthorized financial intermediation. Judge Carlos Vera Barros placed embargoes on them for a total of 3,500 million pesos. While the directors received suspended prison sentences, Garay came out with the probation and opened his own office. Three years later it fell again.
luxury facade
The Arcamone case is of a different nature, but it shares the same scenario: offices in the Rosario downtown where legal and clandestine financial activity mixes. Prosecutor Sebastián Narvaja requested seven years in prison for Arcamone and his right-hand man, Martín Fernández.
He accuses them of 23 scams whose accumulated amount exceeds one million dollars and 240 million pesos. According to the indictment, Arcamone put together a network of companies under the name of Grupo América that included a stock brokerage registered with the National Securities Commission, a mutual fund and real estate developments. The facade worked to capture savings: luxurious offices in the Hermes Building, professional staff, website, advertising.
Once the clients placed their trust in him, he induced them to transfer their funds to the Pedro de Mendoza Mutual Association with promises of above-market returns. A clandestine exchange desk operated behind the mutual. When savers went to withdraw their money they received excuses, promises of payment with non-existent plots of land or straight up silence.
In August 2025, when the Federal Police raided the offices of Arcamone in Córdoba at 1300, in the Hermes Gallery and in a store in Rioja at 300 that was listed as a technical service, but functioned as a cave, they seized more than 90 million pesos, 58,800 dollars, euros, reais, a 9 millimeter caliber pistol, 270 cartridges and cryptocurrency wallets.
An identifiable pattern
Arcamone and Garay are not exceptions: they are part of a pattern. The most scandalous case is that of Luis Herrerawhich they already call Madoff from Rosario. Herrera was head of the Fernández Soljan Stock Exchange, was president of Rofex several times and captured savings from a middle and upper class clientele by promising investments in the Chicago futures market.
The estimated shortage exceeds 35 million dollars. The victims are about 350 savers. The Prosecutor’s Office reconstructed a Ponzi-type scheme: Herrera delivered receipts that simulated account statements for investments that were never made. He has been imprisoned since December 2024 along with his sons Ignacio and Diego. The plaintiffs rejected an abbreviated trial that offered five years in prison. The case is going to oral trial: the Civil Justice that is processing his bankruptcy ordered to trace his actions in A3 Mercados to try to recover some of the lost money.
And there is the case Guardati-Tortithe agrifinance company that was once among the top ten in the country. Its owners, Juan Carlos Guardati and Ángel Torti, They used the funds of 156 stock investors to hide the red of their cereal brokerage. The documented damage was 1,152,151 dollars and 6,768,645 pesos. The two businessmen ended up in prison, accepted a shortened trial and were sentenced to three years and eight months of house arrest. Prosecutor Sebastián Narvaja proved that the crisis was not due to Vicentin’s default, as the defendants alleged: The company already had negative net worth before the fall of the cereal company.
The question that is repeated in the city It is why Rosario produces so many financiers investigated for fraud. It is not about outsiders like Cositorto and its Zoe scheme, but from stockbrokers, many of them, with decades of experience. The names accumulate: Herrera, Arcamone, Carey, Vercesi, Guardati, Torti, Garay, the runner Sebastián Grimaldi, the agent Daniel Casanovas.
