Franco Lee, the ‘centralized Bancomobile’, as he defined himself during an interview on social media given to the ‘Investitori Folli’ channel on the occasion of Blockchain Week in Rome, was arrested. The Carabinieri and the Rome prosecutor’s office who investigated him, however, noticed a series of suspicious movements that led to his arrest.
The accusations
Not only. A huge seizure of cryptocurrencies was also carried out, especially Bitcoin, Usdt, Ethereum and Matic, amounting to 600 thousand euros, the largest seizure carried out by the Army so far. Franco Lee, who lives in Frascati, is seriously accused of the crimes of “illegal exercise of financial activity and offering of investment services to the public, and use in speculative financial services”, cryptocurrencies, of “profit proceeds of crime”, through ” the purchase of cryptocurrencies and money laundering” having taken steps to replace and transfer, with investment “in virtual currency sums of money derived from crime, such as to guarantee anonymity”.
Business on social media
In essence, according to investigators, he would have cleaned up dirty money. The investigations were started in 2023, starting from the monitoring of the Instagram and Telegram social channels where Franco Lee proposed exchanging large sums of cash in exchange for the most popular cryptocurrencies and vice versa, through in-person meetings. During the technical activities it emerged that, having significant cash availability, he could carry out exchanges of euros in cryptocurrencies for up to over 100 thousand euros per single transaction.
The investigations and the money moved
The police, who seized 6 mobile devices, 2 notebooks and 8 credit cards, reconstructed the “broker’s” moves thanks to the analysis of specific cryptocurrency wallets and centralized exchanges. The analysis showed that Franco Lee would have moved 8.8 million euros from 2021 to today, with a number of movements and exchanges exceeding 3000, receiving a commission for each transaction of between 5% and 10%.
An activity carried out without control required by anti-money laundering legislation and without the necessary authorizations, guaranteeing customers anonymity in exchange for significantly higher commissions than those of authorized exchanges, which apply commissions up to 100 times lower.
Who is Franco Lee
Franco Lee is a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency community, so much so that he was interviewed during the ‘Blockchain Week’ event in Rome. On that occasion, but also on his propaganda home page, the suspect defined himself as a ‘Decentralized Bank Mobile available 24 hours a day’ and showed his business card stating that “he could buy and resell any type of cryptocurrency” because he considered himself a ” decentralized promoter”. A man who defined himself as pro bitcoin and above all pro decentralization, not against taxes but in favor of “reclaiming” what belongs to him and “freedom”.
