$LIBRA case: the links between the retiree and the crypto intermediary who helped route Hayden Davis’s payments in Argentina

Hayden Davis, the crypto entrepreneur behind the $LIBRA launch, sent $5 million to Argentina hours after meeting Javier Milei and Mauricio Novelli at Casa Rosada on January 30, 2025. The money did not go straight to Novelli or the other people involved in the launch; according to the investigation, it first passed through Orlando Mellino, a 75-year-old retiree in Tigre, and Camilo Rodríguez Blanco, a Colombian crypto broker who later disappeared from the picture.

1. According to the report by Federico González del Solar in La Nación, Davis made the trip to Argentina at Milei’s request and signed a confidential agreement during that visit. The transfer came shortly after the meeting, which is why the payment trail matters: in high-risk flows, the real question is often not who sent the money, but who was used as the local rail.
2. Rodríguez Blanco, who gave talks on digital assets, and Mellino are represented by the same lawyer in the case being investigated in Comodoro Py. The investigation also says Rodríguez Blanco presented himself as a partner of Diego Mellino, Orlando Mellino’s son, and sources cited by the outlet suggest Diego, not his father, was the person actually involved in the arrangement.
3. Diego Mellino works in chiropractic. Together with his mother, Susana Georges, he created a series of companies and bank accounts in Argentina, Spain, and the United States, including Opel 24 TC S.L, Milenio Up S.L, Globalizing ATH., ORDI INC., Los Mejores del Tablón S.R.L and Modo Domo LLC. That last company is already under investigation in Argentina by the court in Campana over alleged aggravated smuggling and money laundering tied to underinvoicing schemes in Chile.
4. One of the links between the Mellinos and Rodríguez Blanco was a house rental in Florida, Vicente López, where the Colombian lived for at least a year, between 2023 and 2025. The property is 70 square meters, and Rodríguez Blanco paid $700 in rent. According to the investigation, Georges later tried to sell the property without success.
5. On January 30, two crypto wallets attributed to Davis, HDS2 and HDS3, each sent 507,000 USDC to a wallet belonging to Orlando Rodolfo Mellino. In less than three hours, Mellino moved the full amount to another wallet identified as CPE22, for a total of 1,015,000 USDC. Prosecutors suggest CPE22 may have functioned as an exit ramp, converting the crypto into fiat money, similar to cashing out through a crypto cueva.