The founder of Samourai Wallet, a website used to launder criminal wealth, was arrested in the Greater Lisbon area in an operation coordinated by North American authorities. The Judicial Police (JP) took part in the investigation.
As PJ’s statement explains, the suspect, a crypto asset portfolio administrator, is “the prime suspect in a network used on a large scale for money laundering.” The services provided were aimed at laundering proceeds from illegal activities.
During the course of the investigation, elements were collected and disseminated that link the administrators of the Samurai crypto asset portfolio to money laundering activities.
“Outstanding among these services is Whirlpool, a cryptocurrency mixing service that uses funds potentially identified or contaminated by others in order to erase the trace and make it impossible to identify the original, as well as to freeze it by the authorities,” writes PJ.
Over a billion dollars (approx. €930 million) in Bitcoin and over $680 million (approx. €634 million) in BTC have been transferred and used in transactions by Ricochet, a crypto-active exchange platform that develops unique solutions allowing users to invest their crypto assets online real time.
Operation Samurai was partly developed in Portugal by the PS National Unit for Combating Cybercrime and Technology Crime. Several home searches were carried out, as a result of which material assets of high monetary value were seized and databases were collected that would allow the full scope of the facts to be established and the perpetrators to be fully incriminated.
The suspect has been placed in custody and is awaiting extradition proceedings.
Author: morning Post
Source: CM Jornal
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