Operation with FBI. Founder of cryptocurrency portal detained by the judiciary

The North American, detained as part of the operation Samourai coordinated by the FBI, is in pre-trial detention and is awaiting extradition to the United States.

According to a statement published in site of the Judicial Police, “the detainee, a US citizen with an extradition request, administrator of a cryptoasset 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 income arising from illicit activities”.

Since the beginning of the investigation, elements have been collected and shared that relate the administrators of the cryptoasset portfolio Samourai with money laundering activities.“Of these services, we highlight the Whirlpoola cryptocurrency mixing service that involves funds that are potentially identifiable or “contaminated” with others, in order to erase the trail and make original identification impossible, as well as their freezing by the authorities”, explains the PJ note.

The North American citizen will have moved more than a billion dollars in bitcoins and more than 680 million dollars in BTCwhich used in transactions Ricochet, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, which is dedicated to developing exclusive solutions that allow users to invest their cryptographic assets in real time.

Part of the operation that was carried out in national territory, by the National Unit for Combating Cybercrime and Technological Crime of the PJ, had the collaboration of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Federal Revenue Service (IRS-CI) of the USA, “having been several home searches were carried out, which led to the seizure of material assets of high monetary value and a collection of databases that will allow us to determine the full scope of the facts and the complete incrimination of the perpetrators”.