Two executives behind a cryptocurrency service called Samourai Wallet have admitted in court that they helped criminals hide more than $200 million.
Keonne Rodriguez, the company’s CEO, and William Lonergan Hill, its chief technology officer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the United States. Both men admitted they had knowingly operated an unlicensed money-transmitting business that was used to clean illegal funds.
Under the law, Rodriguez and Hill face a maximum prison sentence of five years each, along with financial penalties. They will also have to give up more than $200 million as part of their plea deal.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) had first arrested the pair in April last year. Prosecutors accused them of two main crimes: running a business without the required license and laundering money, a serious charge that can carry up to 20 years in prison.
Authorities say the two executives built Samourai in 2015 with tools designed to make it harder to track money on the blockchain, which is the public digital record of cryptocurrency transactions.
Samourai’s services worked in two main ways:
• Whirlpool: A mixing feature that bundled together Bitcoin transactions from multiple users. This made it harder to trace where the money originally came from.
• Ricochet: A tool that added extra steps called “hops” between the sending and receiving addresses. This technique was meant to confuse investigators and disguise the money trail.
Prosecutors explained that these tools were heavily used by cybercriminals. They were linked to proceeds from online thefts, drug trafficking, and fraud schemes. According to the DOJ, the scale of activity was massive: between 2017 and 2019, over 80,000 Bitcoin flowed through Samourai’s services. At the time of those transactions, the total value was estimated at more than $2 billion.
While the company portrayed itself as offering privacy, federal investigators say it profited directly from crime. Samourai’s mixing services alone generated more than $6 million in fees for Rodriguez and Hill.
Speaking about the case, U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos emphasized that when cryptocurrency platforms are abused for crime, it damages public trust and puts pressure on legitimate companies trying to operate within the law.
The case underlines how regulators are cracking down on cryptocurrency “mixers,” services that blend together digital transactions to hide their origins. While privacy is one of cryptocurrency’s appeals, officials warn that these tools often provide cover for large-scale money laundering.
