A Spanish court has sentenced GetEasy’s Tiago Fontoura Miranda to ten and a half years in prison.

GetEasy was a 2014 MLM Ponzi scheme built around a “GPS tracker” ruse. GetEasy represented it was based out of Macau but was operated from Europe.

Fontoura was GetEasy’s CEO. As per a January 2022 report from El Dario;

Five years after the initial arrests, the National Court has sentenced the three leaders of the group, the five front men they used, and the two Spanish businessmen who created the corporate structure to hide and launder the profits.

The highest sentence, ten and a half years in prison for organized crime and fraud, was handed down to Tiago Fontoura, the public figure of the business who was presented as the company’s CEO.

Along with him, Antonio Joaquim Reis Dos Loios was sentenced to three years and six months after admitting to the facts and collaborating, while Pedro Manuel Duarte was sentenced to 47 years for the same crimes.

The two Spanish businessmen, who also admitted to the facts and collaborated, received sentences of three years and nine months each, in addition to a fine of 1.9 million euros.

The five front men were finally sentenced to terms ranging from three months to two years.

Mario Manuel Lopes Ribeiro, leader of the Orthodox Catholic Church of Portugal, better known as ‘Don João’, was sentenced to two years in prison.

BehindMLM first reported on GetEasy arrests in Spain back in February 2016. António Loios (right) fronted the short-lived VIConcept GetEasy Ponzi reboot in 2015.

Following a reader tipoff, BehindMLM only just recently became aware of the 2022 GetEasy arrests. But that’s not where the arrests end.

On May 29th, 2025, Portuguese authorities arrested a “44 year-old citizen”.

The Judicial Police, through the Criminal Information Unit, arrested, in the Cascais area, a 44-year-old citizen, under whom a European Arrest Warrant was pending, issued by the Belgian judicial authorities, on strong suspicion of the practice of Qualified Fraud crimes.

Between January 2014 and January 2018, the suspect, through a company of which he was the CEO, and which used the sale of geolocators to legitimize its activity, developed a pyramid scheme for his own benefit, harming thousands of people around the world, including in Belgium.

Sound familiar?

The unnamed suspect is wanted by Belgian authorities and, following arrest, is now subject to extradition proceedings. If convicted, the suspect is facing up to five years in prison.

One GetEasy ringleader whose name I haven’t seen pop up in connection with the Spanish arrests is Michael Herzog (right).

Herzog emerged as a money launder for GetEasy early on in 2015. Through his company International Finance Corporation Ltd. (IFC Group), Herzog is suspected of laundering millions of euros for GetEasy.

By mid 2015 GetEasy had collapsed and Herzog disappeared. How much Herzog personally stole through GetEasy is unclear.

No idea if Herzog is the recent arrest but it would seem everybody else involved in GetEasy is otherwise accounted for.

Tracking criminal cases in Europe is notoriously difficult due to laws that protect scammer’s privacy (ref: six years between the original GetEasy arrests and sentencing, during which there were no public updates).

Pending any further public updates on the May 2025 GetEasy arrest, we’ll keep you posted.