Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, co-founders of Samourai Wallet, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to operating a money transmitting business for illegal transactions. The Samourai application, developed around 2015, was designed to transmit criminal proceeds from dark web markets and other illegal schemes. It featured the Whirlpool mixing service to obscure Bitcoin transactions and the Ricochet service for creating unnecessary intermediate transactions. Their operations had a considerable scale, handling over 80,000 Bitcoin, valued over $2 billion.
Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, co-founders of Samourai Wallet, have pled guilty to operating a money transmitting business that facilitated over $200 million in illegal cryptocurrency transactions.
Samourai Wallet was designed to transmit criminal proceeds and included services like Whirlpool and Ricochet, which obscured the origins of Bitcoin activities, preventing law enforcement tracking.
Whirlpool functioned as a Bitcoin mixing service that coordinated exchanges among users, while Ricochet allowed for intermediate transactions, complicating the tracing of illicit financial activities.
The operations of Samourai Wallet were extensive, handling over 80,000 Bitcoin valued over $2 billion since the launch of its services between 2017 and 2019.
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