Samourai Wallet's founders moved $2 billion in bitcoin. They're going to prison

Keonne Rodriguez, 37, and William Lonergan Hill, 67, the co-founders of the bitcoin mixer Samourai Wallet, are going to prison. In November 2025 a Manhattan federal court sentenced Rodriguez, the chief executive, to five years and Hill, the chief technology officer, to four, per IRS Criminal Investigation. It was one of the stiffest US outcomes yet for the operators of a crypto-mixing service.

Rodriguez was sentenced on November 6 and Hill on November 19, both before US District Judge Denise L. Cote. Charged in April 2024, the two pleaded guilty in July 2025 to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business that knowingly moved criminal proceeds, per The Record.

The numbers are substantial. Through its Whirlpool and Ricochet services, Samourai processed more than 80,000 bitcoin — worth over $2 billion at the time — and facilitated over $237 million in illegal transactions, per IRS Criminal Investigation. The court ordered the pair to forfeit $237,832,360.55, and they paid roughly $6.37 million representing the fees the service earned. Each also faces a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Where the money came from

Prosecutors described a customer base built around crime. The laundered funds included proceeds of drug trafficking, online fraud schemes, computer intrusions, activity tied to sanctioned jurisdictions, and a child-sexual-abuse-material website, per IRS Criminal Investigation. These were not incidental users; the government said the founders knew what they were moving.

The theory of the case was not that privacy is illegal, but that the two men took a cut of transactions they knew were criminal. Samourai advertised anonymity features designed to defeat blockchain tracing, and that marketing became evidence of intent once its clientele was shown to be laundering money. Building the tool was one thing; knowingly running it as a laundering channel for a fee was another.

A pattern, not an outlier

Samourai sits alongside the Tornado Cash prosecution in a wider US campaign against crypto-mixing services. Together the cases draw a line: building or running a service that strips the trail from known criminal funds — and profiting from it — can be treated as unlicensed money transmission, regardless of how the software is labeled.

• A 'privacy wallet' that advertises defeating law-enforcement tracing is describing a laundering feature, not a safety feature.
• Operators who profit from transactions they know are criminal can be charged even when they never take conventional custody of funds.
• Coins that passed through a prosecuted mixer can be frozen or refused by compliant exchanges long after the fact.
• Legitimate financial-privacy needs exist — meet them with licensed, transparent tools, not services built to evade reporting rules.

— Sources: [IRS Criminal Investigation](https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/founders-of-samourai-wallet-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-sentenced-to-five-and-four-years-in-prison) · [The Record](https://therecord.media/samourai-wallet-crypto-mixer-founders-sentenced)