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Orionx is done. The Chilean crypto exchange, which had Tether backing and operations across Latin America, announced it’s closing after a forensic audit turned up a $7 million hole in customer assets. Withdrawals are suspended. Clients are waiting. And two co-founders are now facing criminal charges.
The announcement came via X, where Orionx said its main priority is returning client funds. No timeline was given for when withdrawals might resume. That’s a pretty brutal situation for anyone who had money on the platform — and it gets messier the deeper you look.
What the Forensic Audit Actually Found
The audit didn’t just find sloppy accounting. It found that recorded balances for Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, and Polygon were higher than what Orionx actually held in custody. The gap between what the books said and what was actually there came out to roughly $7 million. Not a rounding error. Not a technical glitch. Assets had moved to wallets outside the exchange’s control.
The company’s COO, Thomas Mac Millan, was the one who first caught the mismatch — a discrepancy between recorded balances and actual custody holdings. That discovery triggered the external forensic audit, which confirmed what Mac Millan had flagged. From there, Orionx filed a criminal complaint against two of its own co-founders: Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz.
The complaint is specific. Díaz’s account allegedly received over $1.5 million through 14 separate transfers. Beyond that, the audit pointed to significant movements of other assets: 187 Ether, over 4.1 million USDt, and 200,000 USDC. Those funds were allegedly sent to accounts on other cryptocurrency platforms, which makes recovery harder and the paper trail more complicated.
Both Zibert and Díaz deny the allegations. They say they didn’t compromise customer interests. The transfers in question reportedly happened between 2018 and 2021 — a span of several years — but the investigation into that timeline is still ongoing. Orionx hasn’t specified exactly how or when those transfers were first detected beyond Mac Millan’s initial observation.
Tether’s Series A and the Compliance Review That Unraveled Everything
Tether led Orionx’s Series A funding round in June 2025. The goal, at the time, was to push digital asset adoption across Latin America. Orionx was growing fast — it had built out operations in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, and the Tether backing seemed like a serious vote of confidence in the exchange’s regional ambitions.
But that growth story is basically over now.
The forensic audit came out of a broader operations review Orionx had been running in 2025, tied to compliance with Chile’s Fintech Law. The company brought in financial professionals to go through its processes. That’s what kicked off the review — and that review is what ultimately cracked open the asset discrepancy. So the compliance effort designed to clean things up ended up exposing something much worse.
Fifteen months after Tether’s investment, Orionx is shutting down. That’s a fast collapse for a company that had real regional momentum and institutional backing. Neither Tether nor Orionx has offered further comment on the situation since the announcement.
What Clients and Investors Are Left With
Unclear. That’s kind of the honest answer right now.
Orionx says it’s focused on returning client assets, but withdrawals are still suspended and no recovery timeline has been shared. The criminal complaint is moving forward, but legal proceedings in cases involving cross-platform asset transfers tend to drag. The assets that were allegedly moved to external accounts on other platforms complicate things further — tracing and recovering crypto sent across multiple exchanges isn’t fast or simple.
For clients in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, the wait is real and the uncertainty is significant. The company hasn’t disclosed which assets are recoverable, in what amounts, or through what process clients should expect to be made whole.
And for the broader Latin American crypto market, the Orionx collapse probably stings in a specific way. The region has seen growing appetite for digital assets, and exchange-level failures like this — especially ones involving alleged insider misconduct — tend to rattle retail confidence. Tether’s involvement made Orionx look credible. That credibility is now a liability for everyone associated with the platform.
The criminal complaint against Zibert and Díaz is the live thread here. If prosecutors can establish when the transfers happened, who authorized them, and where the assets went, that’s probably the fastest path to any kind of recovery for clients. But neither Orionx nor its legal team has given a public estimate of how long that process might take.
Mac Millan noticed the mismatch. The audit confirmed it. The co-founders deny it. And $7 million in customer assets is still unaccounted for.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What did the Orionx forensic audit uncover?
The audit found a $7 million gap between customer asset balances recorded by Orionx and the assets actually held in its custody, with funds allegedly moved to external wallets and accounts on other platforms.
Who is Tether and what was its role in Orionx?
Tether led Orionx’s Series A funding round in June 2025, backing the Chilean exchange’s expansion across Latin America including operations in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.
Which co-founders are named in Orionx’s criminal complaint?
Orionx filed a criminal complaint against co-founders Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, alleging unauthorized access to the exchange’s crypto custody systems; both deny the allegations.
Why It Matters
The shutdown of Orionx highlights ongoing vulnerabilities in the crypto exchange sector, particularly in regions like Latin America where regulatory frameworks may be less developed. The significant shortfall in customer assets and the subsequent criminal charges against co-founders raise concerns about operational integrity and investor confidence in the crypto market. This incident may lead to increased scrutiny and regulatory responses, potentially impacting other exchanges and the broader crypto ecosystem.
