The Judicial Police cooperated with the FBI to detain the founder of Samourai Wallet, a cryptocurrency website, which is suspected of being a center for money laundering.
In a statement, the PJ states that William Lonergan Hill used the website to launder criminal fortunes.
In partnership with the North American authorities, searches were carried out in the greater Lisbon area.
“The detainee, a North American citizen with an extradition request, administrator of a cryptocurrency portfolio, is the main suspect of a network used on a large scale for money laundering, which provided various services to its clients with the aim of laundering money. income from illicit activities”, describes the PJ.
“Operation Samourai” collected and shared elements that link the administrators of the cryptoasset portfolio with money laundering activities. One of the services involves funds that are potentially identifiable or “contaminated” with others, in order to erase the trail and make their original identification impossible, as well as their freezing by the authorities.
In total, the PJ and the FBI suspect that at least more than one billion dollars in bitcoins have been moved.
“Present to the judicial authority for the first interrogation, the detainee was placed in preventive detention pending the extradition process”, the statement further explains.
Tags: Cryptocurrencies North American detained Portugal suspected laundering millions
