A financial shepherd and snake charmer, hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting people spread across different parts of the world and a name with only three letters: Zoe. The documentary The Seller of Illusions: The Case of Generation Zoe, which arrives this Thursday the 23rd on Netflix, details in detail and chronologically the creation, rise and fall of an ambitious financial platform that blew up in the faces of both its creators and of their financiers. , ordinary people who dreamed of diamonds and woke up squeezing colored mirrors tightly.
On April 4, 2022, Leonardo Cositorto, creator and mastermind of Generación Zoe, was arrested in the Dominican Republic by Interpol. The general director of the organization had been a fugitive from Justice since mid-February. Today he awaits trial in the Bouwer prison, in Córdoba. In this way, a chapter that had begun only five years earlier was closed, when a new business scheme promised exorbitant dividends (for the time) in dollars, based on the contribution of a certain sum of money.
Director: MatÃas GueilburtWriter: Nicolás GueilburtStars: Leonardo Cositorto, Maximiliano Batista, Juliana Companys
“When the almsgiving is great, even the saint distrusts,” says the saying. But those who donated all their savings to Generation Zoe went overboard. Some even, like the case of Mirian, barely accepted reality when they saw his mentor being taken out of hiding by the police. The victim says in the documentary: "We woke up and there we found out that Leonardo Cositorto had been detained in the Dominican Republic, and there we opened our eyes wide and said: 'Wow, what happened?' he was really running away. They extradited him to Argentina, we see how they bring him in handcuffs, he was a different man. "We couldn't believe what we were seeing and that's when the veil fell a little bit."
The incredible thing is that at the same time that he was preparing to flee our country, Cositorto had launched a new plan to attract unsuspecting people, which promised a profit of 110% in four months. And although information was already circulating on social networks that Zoe did not have the funds to make the payments, those who had fallen fell again. Mirian says in MatÃas Gueilburt's film: “It was a way to support and show a little confidence in the company, because they did not have liquidity to be able to make membership payments. And we all got involved, it was the last opportunity because, they said, there was not going to be another one.”
The naivety, product of the mirage of quickly multiplying savings without the slightest effort and outside of all reasonable logic, left a group of people affected, who began to lose hope that that magical number that they saw growing in their virtual wallets, would be materialize. in your hands . In The Seller of Illusions, the testimonies of those scammed follow one another and the sensation is mixed: a mixture of empathy and at the same time surprise at the naivety of the justifications for contributing a life's savings to a cause beyond their control. Although, of course, with Monday's agenda everything is much simpler.
The differential value of the documentary is the testimonies of Cositorto who, evidently, not only gave his approval to its production but also agreed to an interview where, far from recognizing the cause that has him imprisoned today, he doubles down and promises. To go for more. Maximiliano Batista, vice president of the company and right-hand man of the boss, also testifies. Although much less optimistic and challenging than his boss, Batista distances himself by criticizing and self-criticizing the management of Generación Zoe, and highlights his differences with Cositorto. In any case, there is no message of mea culpa towards all those who ask for their money back. It is estimated that there were around 350 scams for an amount close to 120 million dollars. A sum too high to turn a deaf ear to.
As The Seller of Illusions progresses, the desire grows to see how far the tentacles of that all-powerful octopus called Generation Zoe reached. However, the documentary chose to implode, limiting itself to the company, its victims and “victimizers.” Left out – perhaps by artistic decision, perhaps by adaptation of the product to the international market – were those local hits, which involved figures from our entertainment world. Barely, and without further context, you can guess a fragment of Controversy in the bar, one of the many programs that dealt with Cositorto's company, when his speech was all promises.
Hand in hand with Zoe's unfortunate fate came the network of influences, which were left out of the business holding company that was investigating justice. The one that attracted the most media attention was the play El Juego, by Carlos Paz, starring Diego Reinhold and Gabriel González (popular for her character “Rosita” on the television show Pasión de Sabbath). In addition to being sponsored by Zoe, the show had the advantage of giving away cryptocurrencies to a viewer who overcame a challenge on stage.
The one who, it was said, had been the link between Cositorto and the production was González, who explained his position in an interview with El Doce TV, in February 2022: “My relationship with Cositorto was that of student and teacher. Thanks to my experience as a driver, I began driving all of Zoe's events. Everything that happened surprises me because I didn't have it in my head, for me it was something wonderful, the place I was looking for. When I started writing plays, because of my connection I asked the company for sponsorship and they gave it to me. In November I handed in my car thinking that this cryptocurrency was going to be the bitcoin of Latin America. “I did everything I had to do so that this quickly generated profits, not only for me, because I have been doing solidarity for many years.”
From prison, in an interview with C5N and after clarifying that he was not a fugitive but “on a trip,” Cositorto responded to the artist: “I love Gaby very much, but if she makes herself a victim because she wants to cover up her career so she can continue as Rosita, that's It sounds good to me. Everyone runs because we live in a shitty world. Rosita made a fortune, like she did with anyone who was by my side. In addition, she banked all the theaters on the coast, to which she was supposed to return the money and she did not do so.
At the beginning of this year the case was elevated to a criminal trial, meanwhile, during all this time, Leonardo Cositorto continued trying to get up and move forward with another “revolutionary” idea; this time, around politics. And of the possible options, the space with which he felt most identified was that of La Libertad Avanza. In March 2023, he proposed in an interview with Radio El Mundo: “I am liberal, almost from birth. When he was 19 years old he was already in the army. I opened up when MarÃa Julia Alsogaray and Adelina Dalessio de Viola came, because I didn't like them. I love the free market and I like a State that is present, but that intervenes in a fair and necessary way. If Milei accepts me to compete in the PASO with him, it would be a privilege for me. “He is going to beat me overwhelmingly, but the only thing I want is to express myself, because I am not prohibited.”
The proposal was not heard, but the general director of Generación Zoe returned to the fray as soon as Javier Milei won the elections. This is how LA NACIÓN reproduced, on November 27, 2023, the message: “'The only thing I ask of you is that on April 4, 2024 you be kind enough to grant me pardon, because preventive detention expires after the second year, something even declared by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR),” he expressed in a message recorded from the prison where he is detained. “I have not committed any crime, I do not have any illicit enrichment,” said the also accused in statements to radio El Mundo 1070 AM. Furthermore, he insisted on his request for pardon and indicated that, if granted, he will be made available ad honorem in the area that Milei determines. “And if he doesn't want to accompany me, let him not accompany me, because I'm going to enter politics anyway.” On the other hand, his lawyer, Guillermo Dragotto, came out to explain that Cositorto's request cannot be applied, since the President of the Nation only has the power to pardon people convicted in federal cases, not someone detained in prison. preventive".
In the Netflix documentary, Cositorto points out: “I can apologize to the victims, but I tell them that starting in June 2024, if they let me work, I have a public telephone here, I have capacity because it is not the first time. “I became a millionaire, I will pay you back in the next one, two or three years.”
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