{"id":114863,"date":"2025-11-21T18:20:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=114863"},"modified":"2025-11-21T18:20:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:20:29","slug":"samourai-wallet-co-founder-sentenced-to-four-years-for-crypto-money-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=114863","title":{"rendered":"Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Sentenced to Four Years for Crypto Money Laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Sentenced to Four Years for Crypto Money Laundering<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

On November 19, William \u201cBill\u201d Hill, 67, co-founder of Bitcoin mixing service Samourai Wallet, was sentenced to four years in prison for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business that processed over $237 million in criminal proceeds, according to journalist Frank Corva<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hill pleaded<\/a> guilty in July in the Southern District of New York, admitting<\/a> that the platform he co-founded was used to conceal illicit funds from activities including drug trafficking, darknet marketplaces, cyber intrusions, fraud, sanctioned jurisdictions, murder-for-hire schemes, and a child pornography website.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His co-founder, Keonne Rodriguez, received a five-year sentence.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Hill and Rodriguez actively promoted Samourai Wallet to criminal users on darknet forums and internally recognized that its mixing process functioned as \u201cmoney laundering for Bitcoin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Authorities said the pair ran Samourai Wallet\u2019s Whirlpool and Ricochet services to obscure the origins of criminal proceeds from drug trafficking, darknet marketplaces, fraud schemes, cybercrime, and even murder-for-hire operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whirlpool coordinated Bitcoin exchanges between users, while Ricochet added multiple transaction \u201chops\u201d to make tracing more difficult. From 2017 to 2019, over 80,000 Bitcoin \u2014 worth more than $2 billion at the time \u2014 flowed through the services, generating over $6 million in fees, prosecutors said<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Court records indicate Rodriguez and Hill actively encouraged criminal use through Samourai Wallet, with Rodriguez describing the services as \u201cmoney laundering for bitcoin\u201d and Hill promoting Whirlpool on a darknet forum as making illicit funds \u201cuntraceable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

They also publicly urged hackers to launder stolen funds following a 2020 social media hack, prosecutors contended.<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s sentence was reduced due to his age and recent autism diagnosis, with the judge allowing him to serve three years of supervised release from Lisbon, and imposing a $250,000 fine.<\/p>\n

The case reflects a growing crackdown on privacy-focused crypto tools, following similar prosecutions of developers of platforms like Tornado Cash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hill expressed remorse at sentencing, stating, \u201cI am deeply remorseful and ashamed of what I did,\u201d highlighting the increasing scrutiny on services designed to obscure digital asset transactions.<\/p>\n

Samourai Wallet\u2019s CEO sentencing<\/h2>\n

As mentioned earlier, <\/strong>Keonne Rodriguez, CEO of Samourai Wallet, was sentenced<\/a> to five years in prison earlier this month for the same scheme.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez\u2019s sentencing, handed down by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan, followed an hour-long hearing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rodriguez and Hill were arrested in April 2024 and charged<\/a> with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice framed the case as part of a wider crackdown on crypto mixing services, emphasizing the defendants\u2019 active promotion of illicit fund laundering, which undermined trust in digital assets.<\/p>\n

Samourai Wallet<\/a><\/p>\n

This post Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Sentenced to Four Years for Crypto Money Laundering<\/a> first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine<\/a> and is written by Micah Zimmerman<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Sentenced to Four Years for Crypto Money Laundering On November 19, William \u201cBill\u201d Hill, 67, co-founder of Bitcoin mixing service Samourai Wallet, was sentenced to four years in prison for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business that processed over $237 million in criminal proceeds, according to journalist Frank Corva.\u00a0\u00a0 Hill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":114864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/114864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}