Arrest made by Portugal’s PJ police as part of major operation led by the FBI in the US
Portugal’s PJ criminal police have arrested a foreigner suspected of running a criminal organisation dedicated to “widespread manipulation” in the cryptocurrency markets, at the request of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As part of an international cooperation operation, PJ police located and detained one of the executive directors of a cryptocurrency financial services company in Cascais, and two other detentions were made at the same time, one in the United States and the other in the United Kingdom.
“In the police operation led by the FBI, more than US$25 million (€22.9 million) in cryptocurrencies were seized” and “several trading ‘bots’ (computer programmes that perform automatic tasks over the Internet) responsible for millions of dollars in money laundering transactions” were deactivated, the PJ said in a statement.
According to PJ, ‘the “modus operandi” used involved setting up companies with false statements about cryptocurrencies (‘tokens’) and carrying out false trades to create the appearance that they were good investments, which attracted investors and buyers and led to an increase in the price of the currency.
“The suspects are also accused of having sold ‘tokens’ at artificially inflated prices, a fraud commonly known as ‘pump and dump‘,” the police force adds.
According to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, 18 peoples and entities have been charged with widespread fraud and manipulation in the cryptocurrency markets.
“The charges were unveiled in Boston against the leaders of four cryptocurrency companies, four cryptocurrency financial services companies (known as ‘market makers’), and employees of those companies,” says the statement released last week.
It also states that these are the “first criminal charges against financial services companies for (…) ‘wash trading’ (buying and selling the same financial instruments at the same time to manipulate the market) in the cryptocurrency industry”.
Source: LUSA
