{"id":49061,"date":"2025-11-21T13:20:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/?p=49061"},"modified":"2026-04-12T23:55:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T04:55:34","slug":"samourai-wallet-co-founder-sentenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/news\/samourai-wallet-co-founder-sentenced","title":{"rendered":"Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Sentenced to Four Years for Conspiracy To Commit Money Laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"
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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>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

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

Samourai Wallet’s CEO sentencing<\/h2>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n

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

\"Samourai
Samourai Wallet<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samourai Wallet co-founder William Hill was sentenced to four years in prison for running a crypto mixing service that laundered over $237 million in illicit funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3817,"featured_media":49062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4378],"tags":[215,214,780],"class_list":{"0":"post-49061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-samourai","9":"tag-samourai-wallet","10":"tag-wallet"},"author_data":{"id":3817,"name":"Micah Zimmerman","nicename":"micahzimmerman","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Micah_Zimmerman_Author_Image.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Samourai-Wallet-Co-Founder-Sentenced-to-Four-Years-for-Crypto-Money-Laundering.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}