A Samourai wallet developer was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for operating a cryptocurrency mixing service that prosecutors say laundered $237 million in illicit funds.
Keonne Rodriguez, CEO of Samourai Wallet, received the statutory maximum from US District Judge Dennis Cote in the Southern District of New York, after an hour-long hearing in Manhattan. According to By journalist Frank Korva.
Fellow developer William Lonergan Hill, the company’s CTO, is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.
Rodriguez and Hill were arrested in April 2024 and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business. After more than a year of litigation, they both pleaded guilty to a charge of unauthorized money transfer in exchange for prosecutors dropping the more serious money laundering conspiracy charge, which maximum 20 years in prison.
Samourai Wallet allegedly concealed criminal activity
Prosecutors He said The pair operated Samourai Wallet’s cryptocurrency mixing services, Whirlpool and Ricochet, to hide the origins of criminal proceeds from drug trafficking, dark web markets, cyber intrusions, Ponzi schemes, and murder-for-hire operations.
Whirlpool coordinated batches of bitcoin exchanges between users, while Ricochet introduced multiple intermediary transactions, or “hops,” to make tracking the funds more difficult. Since launching Ricochet in 2017 and founding Whirlpool in 2019, more than 80,000 bitcoins — valued at more than $2 billion at the time — have passed through the services, generating more than $6 million in fees.
Court documents reveals that Rodriguez and Hill actively encouraged the criminal use of the Samurai Wallet. In WhatsApp messages, Rodriguez described the service as “money laundering for bitcoin,” and Hill promoted Whirlpool on Dread, a darknet forum, as a tool to make illicit money “untraceable.”
After a social media hack in 2020, the duo tracked the stolen funds in real-time and publicly urged the hackers to launder the proceeds through Samourai Wallet.
Ministry of Justice framed The case is part of a broader crackdown on cryptocurrency mixing services, following the conviction in August of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm on charges of operating an unlicensed money transfer business.
Special agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation Office and the FBI confirmed that Rodriguez and Hill not only facilitated the laundering of illicit proceeds, but actively encouraged them, undermining public confidence in digital assets.
Rodriguez, 35, asked to be sentenced to one year and a day in prison, while Hill asked to serve time. The prosecution had requested the full statutory maximum of five years for both defendants, which Judge Cote imposed on Rodriguez.
Hill is scheduled to be sentenced Friday at 11 a.m. ET.
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