$LIBRA case: Argentine judge orders identification of 25 crypto wallets tied to the scandal

Federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi has ordered the identification of the holders of 25 cryptocurrency wallets that were moving digital dollars in recent months, as investigators try to trace money left with the token’s creators after last year’s failed launch. For PSPs and exchanges, the useful detail is straightforward: once funds touch a centralized platform like Binance, KYC (Know Your Customer) records, IP addresses, and account history can turn an on-chain trail into a real person.

1. The order was issued in the $LIBRA investigation after a technical report from the Cybercrime Department of the Argentine Federal Police mapped cryptoasset flows across different networks starting in May this year. Martínez de Giorgi issued the measure around the same time he excluded injured plaintiffs from the case, a decision that has already been appealed to the Federal Chamber.
2. According to the document seen by Clarín, the judge reconstructed movements from eight wallets called “Libra Team”, a group linked both to the creation of $LIBRA and to the withdrawal of investor funds on the night Javier Milei promoted the token. That same night, the price briefly spiked and then collapsed within minutes.
3. Hayden Davis, the token’s creator, said that about $110 million remained with him as a result of that maneuver. The police report says four of the eight “Libra Team” wallets moved funds into a single wallet identified as “61yk”, which had been frozen for almost six months at the request of the U.S. Southern District of New York in the case against Davis in the United States.
4. From there, the “61yk” wallet reportedly used a digital smurfing pattern, splitting amounts across multiple wallets to liquidate assets into fiat or make tracing harder. On 10 May, investigators say there was a mass outflow using an interoperability protocol to move assets across networks, resulting in 498,539 USDT being transferred to a Tron wallet.
5. That Tron wallet then split the funds into 17 transactions sent to different wallets. When those transactions were traced, at least 10 were found to have passed through centralized platforms, including Binance. That is the point where blockchain forensics stops being purely theoretical: centralized venues hold KYC data, so the judge has now asked for identification of account holders, KYC records, associated IP addresses, and transaction history.

For high-risk operators, the practical lesson is boring but important: once crypto flows touch centralized infrastructure, the compliance paper trail can become evidence. In cases like this, wallet tracing, exchange records, and user identification are not separate worlds; they are the same investigation viewed from different ends.