Legal professional for the USA, Appearing Underneath Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515, Nicolas Roos; Particular Agent in Cost of the New York Discipline Workplace of Inside Income Service-Felony Investigation (“IRS-CI”), Harry T. Chavis, Jr.; and Assistant Director in Cost of the New York Discipline Workplace of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), Christopher G. Raia, introduced right now the responsible pleas of KEONNE RODRIGUEZ and WILLIAM LONERGAN HILL, the co-founders of Samourai Wallet (“Samourai”), a cryptocurrency mixer that facilitated greater than $200 million in unlawful transactions. RODRIGUEZ, the Chief Govt Officer of Samourai, and HILL, the Chief Know-how Officer, pled responsible to collaborating in a conspiracy to function a cash transmitting enterprise that transmitted crime proceeds from, amongst different issues, unlawful darkish internet markets, cyber intrusions, a spear phishing scheme, and schemes to defraud a number of decentralized finance protocols. RODRIGUEZ and HILL pled responsible on July 30, 2025, earlier than U.S. District Choose Denise L. Cote.
“The defendants created and operated a cryptocurrency mixing service that they knew enabled criminals to clean thousands and thousands in soiled cash, together with proceeds from cryptocurrency thefts, drug trafficking operations, and fraud schemes,” stated Legal professional for the USA Nicolas Roos. “When criminals exploit cryptocurrency know-how for illicit functions, it undermines the general public belief and unfairly burdens reputable cryptocurrency corporations which are dedicated to working lawfully. This Workplace and our associate companies are dedicated to holding accountable those that exploit rising applied sciences to launder crime proceeds.”
“Rodriguez and Hill admitted to working a cash transmitting enterprise that transmitted crime proceeds, basically ‘washing’ greater than $200 million in ‘soiled’ cash for criminals,” stated Particular Agent in Cost of IRS-CI, Harry T. Chavis, Jr. “They didn’t simply facilitate this illicit motion of cash, but additionally inspired it. Particular Brokers with IRS-CI New York and IRS-CI LA’s Cyber items labored with our federal and worldwide regulation enforcement companions on this investigation that detailed the corporate’s clear disregard for the rule of regulation. Even with all of the ‘washing’ on this scheme, nobody was clear in these transactions.”
“Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill’s responsible pleas show their cryptocurrency mixing service–Samourai Wallet–was designed to hide felony monetary transactions and launder thousands and thousands of {dollars} of soiled cash,” stated FBI Assistant Director in Cost Christopher G. Raia. “The FBI is dedicated to bringing to justice anybody who makes use of technological innovation to facilitate illicit exercise.”
Based on court docket paperwork and admissions:
Starting round 2015, RODRIGUEZ and HILL started growing Samourai, a cell utility that was designed and operated as a service for transmitting felony proceeds. The defendants engineered Samourai round two providers particularly supposed to hide the character of illicit transactions. The primary, a Bitcoin mixing service generally known as “Whirlpool,” coordinated batches of Bitcoin exchanges between teams of Samourai customers. By way of this course of, the unique supply of explicit Bitcoin holdings grew to become obscured throughout the blockchain’s transactional report, successfully stopping regulation enforcement companies and cryptocurrency exchanges from tracing funds again to their origins. The second service, known as “Ricochet,” enabled customers to introduce further and pointless intermediate transactions—generally known as “hops”—between sending and receiving addresses. This function served an identical obfuscation function, making it considerably harder for monitoring entities to determine connections between cryptocurrency transfers and potential illicit actions. The size of these operations proved appreciable: from Ricochet’s launch in 2017 and Whirlpool’s inception in 2019, greater than 80,000 Bitcoin—valued at over $2 billion when calculated utilizing contemporaneous change charges—handed by these providers. Samourai collected a payment for each providers, estimated to be over $6 million in income primarily based on Bitcoin’s worth on the time every payment was earned.
RODRIGUEZ and HILL actively promoted Samourai’s utility for concealing felony proceeds. Their communications reveal a transparent understanding of Samourai’s unlawful functions. In a WhatsApp change, when requested to elucidate the idea of “mixing,” RODRIGUEZ described the method as “cash laundering for bitcoin.” HILL equally marketed Samourai as a transmittal service for felony proceeds on Dread, a darknet discussion board devoted to discussing unlawful market actions. In a single change on that platform, a person requested about probably the most “safe strategies to scrub soiled BTC” to make it “untraceable, clear” and make sure the person would “by no means get caught.” HILL responded by writing that “Samourai Whirlpool is a a lot better possibility” than a competitor service to “clear soiled BTC.” The defendant’s personal advertising supplies acknowledged that prospects would come with “Darkish/Gray Market contributors” transferring proceeds from “illicit exercise.”
The defendants’ conduct prolonged past passive facilitation to lively encouragement of felony exercise. In June and July 2020, RODRIGUEZ and HILL tracked in actual time the stream of crime proceeds from a broadly publicized hack of a distinguished social media platform. Quite than reporting the felony exercise or making an attempt to cease it, each defendants publicly and privately expressed their intent and want that the hackers use Samourai’s Whirlpool service to maneuver the crime proceeds of the hack. That encouragement included a July 16, 2020 Twitter change: after a 3rd occasion inspired the “pretty hackers” of the social media platform to “use @SamouraiWallet whirlpool to combine out as soon as you might be completed amassing or determine to take income” with a view to “defend you from being discovered,” RODRIGUEZ responded by personally encouraging the hackers to “feed” and “ship” the crime proceeds into Samourai’s Whirlpool. When the hackers used a special cryptocurrency mixing service to launder the proceeds of the hack, RODRIGUEZ and HILL expressed their disappointment on social media.
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RODRIGUEZ, 36, of Concord, Pennsylvania, and HILL, 67, a U.S. nationwide who was arrested in Portugal, every pled responsible to 1 rely of conspiracy to function a cash transmitting enterprise understanding the enterprise transmitted crime proceeds, which carries a most sentence of 5 years in jail. As half of their plea agreements with the Authorities, RODRIGUEZ and HILL agreed to forfeit $237,832,360.55.
The utmost potential sentence on this case is prescribed by Congress and supplied right here for informational functions solely, as any sentencing of the defendants shall be decided by the decide.
Mr. Roos praised the investigative work of IRS-CI and the FBI. He additionally acknowledged the help of the Justice Division’s Workplace of Worldwide Affairs, Europol, the Portuguese Judicial Police, the Procuradoria-Geral da República, the Icelandic Police, and the FBI Discipline Workplace in Pittsburgh for his or her help within the investigation of this case.
The Justice Division’s Workplace of Worldwide Affairs supplied substantial help to safe the July 2024 extradition from Portugal of HILL.
This case is being dealt with by the Workplace’s Advanced Frauds and Cybercrime Unit and Illicit Finance and Cash Laundering Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew Ok. Chan, David R. Felton, and Cecilia Vogel are in cost of the prosecution.