Samourai Wallet Co-Founders Sentenced to Prison

Samourai Wallet’s two co-founders have been sentenced for their roles in knowingly laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit funds. Both will pay fines of $250k, and the pair has already forfeited over $6.4M.

What's the Scoop?

• Founders Sentenced: Samourai CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Lonergan Hill previously pleaded guilty to knowingly transmitting over $237M in criminal proceeds this July. The pair was respectively sentenced to five and four years in prison.
• Built to Evade: According to prosecutors, Samourai was engineered around two services specifically intended to conceal the nature of illicit transactions. The first obscured the origins of a particular Bitcoin holding and the second introduced unnecessary intermediate transactions for transfers, preventing law enforcement agencies from tracing funds back to their origins.
• Marketed for Criminals: Samourai's own marketing materials and communication promoted the product's use for illicit activity. In one example provided by prosecutors, CEO Rodriguez described his service as “money laundering for bitcoin" when asked to explain the concept of mixing.
• Pardon Efforts: Grassroots efforts appealing to President Donald Trump for a pardon or sentence commutation have taken form. At the time of writing, one such change.org petition had gathered 952 signatures.

What's the Take?

While Attorney for the United States Nicolas Roos positioned this outcome as a win against "those who profit by helping criminals hide their criminal proceeds," many within the crypto industry perceive this development yet another salvo in the ongoing assault against onchain privacy.