Samourai Wallet co-founder sentenced to five years in prison

The founder of Samourai Wallet has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to a conspiracy ￰0￱ about a year and seven months since his arrest, Samourai Wallet dev, Keonne Rodriguez, has been sentenced to five years in ￰1￱ case against Samourai Wallet Keonne Rodriguez and his co-founder William Lonergan Hill launched Samourai Wallet in 2015 as a privacy-focused Bitcoin ￰2￱ wallet was advertised on its website and via social media as a “premium privacy service” and it made use of marketing language such as “No email address, no ID check, and no hassle”, and clearly targeted “Dark/Grey Market participants” who were repeatedly reminded that their Bitcoin transfers would be hard to trace on the ￰3￱ April 2024, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill were arrested and later indicted by the ￰4￱ never registered as a money transmitting business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and did not implement effective anti-money-laundering (AML) or “know your customer” (KYC) protocols.

P rosecut ors claim that Samourai processed about $237 million in illicit funds between 2015 and April ￰5￱ and Hill pleaded guilty on July 30, 2025, to a charge of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Rogriguez’s verdict is bad news for privacy advocates On November 6, 2025, Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to 60 months (5 years) in federal ￰6￱ sentence is the statutory maximum for the charge requested by the prosecution, as Cryptopolitan reported earlier during the ￰7￱ is also required to pay a fine and will be supervised after his ￰8￱ Denise ￰9￱ was not swayed by Rogriguez’s defense of privacy tools, citing its failure to address the real-world consequences of facilitating criminal ￰10￱ presiding judge also found his letters of remorse failing to show sufficient acknowledgement for the human suffering his actions ￰11￱ verdict is bad news for the other party in this case as well as Tornado Cash developers facing similar charges for running a privacy tool for transmitting funds.

Meanwhile, it appears the U. S. government’s promise to allow digital asset innovation while cracking down on illegality does not extend to crypto-mixers and privacy-enhancing tools when it’s used to aid criminal ￰12￱ has caused some tension as open-source privacy tools have been praised by advocates as protections for financial freedom and human ￰13￱ your free seat in an exclusive crypto trading community - limited to 1,000 members.