Orionx, the Chilean crypto exchange that Tether backed in 2025, has started a permanent shutdown after a forensic audit found more than $7 million in customer assets sitting in wallets the company does not control. Withdrawals are suspended while the firm works through a restitution plan, and it has filed a criminal complaint against two of its own co-founders.
The company announced the closure on September 3. A day earlier, it filed the complaint with Chile’s Public Prosecutor’s Office against Roberto Zibert and Joaquin Diaz, both former co-founders who had access to the exchange’s custody systems, according to reporting by Cointelegraph and the Chilean newspaper La Tercera. Both men deny wrongdoing.
How the gap surfaced
The discrepancy came to light on August 27, when chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan noticed what the complaint calls a significant mismatch between the balances recorded in Orionx’s systems and the assets actually held in custody. An internal review followed, and the company then commissioned an external forensic audit.
That audit compared Orionx’s internal records with data verifiable on-chain. It found that recorded balances exceeded the assets held at the exchange’s custody addresses across Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Polygon. The outflows were absent from the company’s books.
The complaint alleges the transfers happened between 2018 and 2021, years before Tether invested. An account associated with Diaz reportedly received more than $1.5 million across 14 transfers. A separate wallet is said to have received 187 ETH, more than 4.1 million USDT and 200,000 USDC.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Closure announced | September 3, 2026 |
| Custody gap found | August 27, 2026, by COO Thomas Mac Millan |
| Missing assets | Over $7 million in BTC, ETH, XRP, POL and stablecoins |
| Alleged transfer window | 2018 to 2021 |
| Accused | Co-founders Roberto Zibert and Joaquin Diaz |
| Tether investment | Led Series A in June 2025 |
Tether’s bet gone wrong
Tether led Orionx’s Series A in June 2025 as part of its push to expand digital asset adoption in Latin America. The closure comes 15 months later. Tether invested after the disputed transfers allegedly took place, but the association is still awkward for a company that has spent two years repositioning itself as a compliance-minded US operator.
Orionx was founded in Chile in 2017 and grew from a retail exchange into a platform offering crypto payments and financial services across Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The company had been working toward registration under Chile’s Fintech Law, which requires crypto firms to meet custody and capital rules. That compliance review in 2025 is what brought in the outside financial professionals who eventually surfaced the problem.
Chile’s Financial Market Commission had already rejected Orionx’s application to register as a financial services provider in June, before the custody findings became public. The regulator’s decision meant the exchange was operating without the formal registration it had been pursuing, which narrowed its options once the audit results arrived.
“Our sole priority now is to return as much of our clients’ assets as possible,” Orionx said in its closure announcement.
What happens to customer funds
Withdrawals remain suspended. The exchange says the freeze is meant to prevent anyone from withdrawing ahead of other clients while the recovery process runs. It has reported its asset closure and restitution plan to the authorities, and the first phase is already in motion.
The company has not said how much of the missing $7 million it expects to recover, or how long the process will take. The criminal complaint is now with prosecutors, and any recovery from the accused individuals would likely run through Chilean courts, a process that in comparable Latin American cases has taken years rather than months.
For customers, the practical picture is grim. Assets held on a failed exchange rank behind secured creditors in most insolvency frameworks, and Chile’s framework for crypto custody claims is still maturing. The Fintech Law was designed in part to prevent exactly this scenario by requiring segregation of customer assets, but Orionx’s shortfall predates the law’s full application.
A familiar pattern
The case fits a pattern the industry knows well. Internal records and on-chain reality diverged for years before anyone noticed. The gap only came to light because Chile’s Fintech Law forced a formal review, not because of any routine check by investors or auditors. Exchanges operating in jurisdictions without equivalent requirements have no such forcing function, and the history of exchange failures from Mt. Gox onward shows that unrecorded outflows tend to surface only when withdrawals are tested.
The timing of the alleged transfers is also worth noting. The complaint says funds moved between 2018 and 2021, a period when Orionx was a small retail exchange with limited oversight. By the time Tether arrived with a Series A check in June 2025, the alleged diversions were years old. Diligence that focuses on current balances and recent financials would not necessarily catch historical custody shortfalls, particularly when the books themselves were falsified.
Tether has not publicly commented on the closure. The stablecoin issuer has been expanding across Latin America through investments and partnerships, and Orionx was one of its marquee regional bets. The loss of the investment is minor for a company of Tether’s size, but the reputational arithmetic is less favorable: a firm it backed and promoted is now the subject of a criminal complaint alleging its founders drained customer funds.
Chilean prosecutors have not said whether they will pursue charges. Zibert and Diaz, through representatives, have denied the allegations and signaled they will contest the complaint. La Tercera first reported the details of the criminal complaint, including the transfer amounts and the alleged timeline.