Samourai Wallet Founders Plead Guilty in $100M Bitcoin Laundering Case

Samourai Wallet Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill decided to acknowledge guilty on the charges of the mixer service.

The couple was denied by guilt in April 2024 and made several attempts to drop a lawsuit.

The calls changed on Wednesday

According to court documents subscriber Earlier in the week, the executives agreed to change their acceptance during a hearing on Wednesday morning before Judge Dennis Cote. The two faced charges of conspiracy to money laundering, a crime that is punishable by imprisonment for up to 20 years, and operating a company that is not licensed to take money, which carries a five -year prison sentence. This brings the total of prison time to 25 years.

Public Prosecutors alleged Samurai handled more than two billion dollars in illegal transactions and was washed more than $ 100 million in criminal revenue. This includes payments related to illegal markets online such as Silk Road.

The US Department of Justice claims that the features of Wallet Whirlpool and Ricochet are designed to hide bitcoin transactions. The indictment was also martyred in internal communications and social media, which turned out that the two were aware that Samurai was used in criminal activity and its marketing activity for such operations.

The founders made several attempts to refuse to litigate against them. After a note on April 12 issued by the Deputy Prosecutor Todd Blanche, which stated that the Ministry of Justice is no longer following up cases based on the actions of the user or organizational technical aspects, their lawyers paid the charges.

A month later, their defense submitted another proposal, claiming that the prosecutors have blocked internal contacts from Final, indicating that the Samourai portfolio was not qualified as a money sender and therefore it was not legally required to register. However, the Ministry of Justice argued that he was not obliged to share this evidence.

A harmful legal precedent

Elsewhere, Tornado Cash faces similar legal procedures with Roman Storm, one of its co -founders, who is currently being tried in front of the jury. His trial began in July in the Federal Manhattan Court, where he faces allegations of money laundering, US sanctions, and operating an unlicensed company to take money.

Critics He says These lawsuits can put a dangerous precedent by criminalizing open source development of non -trustee tools that do not bear the user’s money. They argue that programmers should not take responsibility for how to use an independent code, especially when there is no direct evidence of the intention to commit crimes.

Earlier this year, Blockchain developer foot A lawsuit against the Ministry of Justice, in Shafa, the Biden Administration, claiming that it has undermined the innovation of encryption. He accused the power of excessive treatment of creators of non -trustee encryption programs of being unlicensed money sending devices.