Samourai Wallet Founders Arrested for Alleged $100 Million Money Laundering

The U.S. federal prosecutors have charged the founders of the anonymous Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet with facilitating the laundering of $100 million in criminal proceeds. The service’s CEO, Keonne Rodriguez, was arrested on the morning of April 24 in the United States. CTO William Lonergan Hill was detained in Portugal, with extradition proceedings underway. 

Authorities report that from 2015 to February 2024, Rodriguez and Hill operated an unlicensed money transmission business. During this period, they processed anonymous transactions totaling $2 billion.

Funds from sanctioned individuals, various cybercriminals, and darknet marketplaces, including Silk Road and Hydra, allegedly flowed through Samourai Wallet, according to U.S. prosecutors.

With the assistance of Icelandic law enforcement, servers and the domain of Samourai (https://samourai.io/) have been seized. Additionally, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the wallet’s mobile application on the Google Play store, which had over 100,000 downloads. 

The privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet offered users a range of services to obscure asset origins and confuse transaction recipient chains, notably Ricochet.

In 2019, developers integrated the Whirlpool feature into the wallet, part of the broader CoinJoin anonymization solution. This feature mathematically separated inputs (senders) from outputs (recipients), thereby complicating the tracking of fund movements.

According to prosecutors’ estimates, the total fees collected by the creators of Samourai Wallet for Ricochet and Whirlpool services amounted to $4.5 million.

Regulators worldwide are intensifying their stance on cryptocurrency mixers. Notably, the FinCEN plans to designate them as “money laundering hubs” that threaten U.S. national security. 

In November 2023, the California-based Bitcoin platform Swan Bitcoin warned users via email of indefinite bans for direct use of crypto mixers. 

In March 2024, a U.S. jury found Russian Roman Sterlingov guilty of operating the Bitcoin Fog crypto mixer and laundering over $400 million. He faces up to 20 years in prison.