North American detained in Lisbon helped to launder millions of Russian oligarchs – Portugal

For almost a decade, William Hill and Keonne Rodriguez represented a “haven of refuge” for criminals who wanted to launder money obtained through drug deals in dark web. In total, more than 100 million dollars will have been laundered through the platform they created in 2015, the Samourai Wallet. The scheme was dismantled a week ago and Will was detained in Lisbon where he had been living for around a year.

William Lonergan Hill, 65, and his partner Keonne Rodriguez, 35, are suspected of money laundering, in addition to having operated monetary transactions without a license, circulating assets worth two billion dollars, according to the indictment. by New York Southern District Attorney Damian Williams.

The prosecutor in charge of the case argues that, through this scheme, the duo formed by Keonne Rodriguez (executive director of the company) and William Lonergan Hill (technology director) made it possible to launder more than 100 million dollars from markets in the dark web. They also facilitated the transaction of more than two billion dollars through their platform, which is not licensed to do so.

Rodriguez was arrested in Pennsylvania, in the United States, while Hill was detained in the historic center of Lisbon, where he had a home. The US court has already announced that it would request Hill’s extradition so that he can be tried on US soil.

The operation Samourai It was set up by the North American authorities (FBI, IRS and New York Attorney General’s Office) and included the participation of the Judiciary Police (PJ), which monitored one of the promoters of the illegal scheme 24 hours a day for almost two years. The operation culminated in the arrest of two suspects, the founders of Samourai Wallet, and with the application being shut down. According to authorities in both countries, over the nine years in which it was operating, the Samourai Wallet application was used to launder criminal fortunes through monetary transaction schemes for which the company did not have a license.

Samourai attracted even more attention from US authorities from 2022 onwards, when it positioned itself as the platform of excellence for Russian oligarchs to launder their money at a time when they were targets of sanctions from the West, following the invasion. from Ukraine.

US tax agent Thomas Fattorusso stated that all the money transacted without a license means that there were “two billion dollars that passed from hand to hand without any kind of surveillance. We don’t know to whom or where.”

This platform operated for almost ten years and served as a “safe haven for other criminals”, in the FBI’s opinion.

What is Samourai Wallet?

Samourai was created in 2015 as a cryptocurrency transaction application. Between 2015 and 2024, Rodriguez and Hill developed, promoted and operated Samourai, whose features allowed anonymous financial transactions to be made, a service that is offered by several other applications. However, Samourai did not have a license to operate which meant there was no regulation for these transfers, making them illegal.

This particularity (not being monitored) offered an opportunity for users to launder money obtained through illicit operations, namely through black markets. onlineespecially the Silk Road (specializing in drug sales) and the Hydra Market (also specialized in drug sales, but aimed at the Russian market). More than 100 million dollars passed through Samourai to launder money from the company’s businesses. dark web that passed through these markets.

To launder this money, Samourai used two methods. In one, known as Whirlpool, it mixed crypto assets with legal origins with others originating from illegal activities, making it difficult for authorities to identify the origin of the assets. It also made use of the Ricochet tactic which, according to the Judiciary Police, consists of a cryptocurrency exchange “which is dedicated to developing exclusive solutions that allow users to invest their cryptographic assets in real time”, adding an unnecessary process that served to distract authorities from transacting assets between accounts.

Throughout its life, Samourai was also used to launch phishing and other illegal activities, according to US authorities. Over the almost ten years in which it has been operating, the application has been downloaded more than 100 thousand times and in total more than 80 thousand transactions have been made. bitcoins (or more than two billion euros according to the conversion rate at the time the transfers were made). From these transactions, Samourai charged a fee that would have cost the company more than four million dollars.

Enlargement to Russian oligarchs

US authorities report, in the indictment, that Rodriguez and Hill used Twitter to invite criminals to use Samourai to launder money. A publication made a few weeks after a package of sanctions on Russian oligarchs was applied in 2022 is detailed, which read: “Welcome Russian oligarchs, new users of the Samourai wallet”.

In private messages exchanged on that social network currently called X, Hill explained to a user of the social network that the company was “focused on resisting censorship of the economy’s black/gray markets.”

Interpol even considered that Samourai represented a “major threat” to the authorities’ ability to investigate the origins of the money.

Arrest in Lisbon

William Hill, 65 years old, is a North American citizen expatriated in Europe for several years and arrived in Portugal in 2023. He moved to the country with his family, coming from France, but his arrival did not go unnoticed. Arriving in Portugal, Hill began to be constantly monitored by the PJ at the request of the FBI.

From his apartment in the historic center of Lisbon, the American continued to operate Samourai together with Keonne Rodriguez, who remained in Florida.

In Lisbon, the Judiciary seized computer equipment, servers and other evidence.

Part of the operation was carried out on national territory by the National Unit for Combating Cybercrime and Technological Crime of the PJ and had the collaboration of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Federal Revenue Service (IRS-CI) of the USA.

Meanwhile, in collaboration with the Icelandic authorities, Samourai’s servers and its domain online (https://samourai.io/) were seized and sent down. An order was also issued for the Samourai mobile application to be removed from the Google Play Store in the United States.