In short
- William Lonergan Hill was sentenced to four years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fined $250,000 for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter.
- Hill and co-founder Keonne Rodriguez processed more than $2 billion worth of Bitcoin through Samourai Wallet’s mixing tools between 2017 and 2024, earning approximately $6 million in fees.
- Prosecutors said the pair marketed Samourai to criminals on darknet forums and encouraged hackers to launder stolen money through the platform.
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced William Lonergan Hill, co-founder of Samourai Wallet, to four years in prison, the second conviction in a case that crypto advocates say threatens the freedom of software development.
Judge Denise L. Cote sentenced the 67-year-old developer to three years of supervised release and imposed a $250,000 fine, according to a statement by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The punishment comes two weeks after Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez was fined. five years imprisonment and a similar fine.
Rodriguez and Hill pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitter after prosecutors agreed to drop more serious money laundering charges.
“The sentences the defendants have received send a clear message that laundering known criminal proceeds — regardless of the technology used and whether the proceeds are in the form of fiat or cryptocurrency — will have serious consequences,” U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in the statement.
Authorities also said Samourai Wallet users relied on the “Whirlpool” (2019) mixing service and “Ricochet” (2017) tool for adding hops to obscure Bitcoin transactions, moving over 80,000 BTC worth over $2 billion and generating approximately $6 million in fees.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Hill promoted Samourai on the darknet forum Dread as a way to “clean up dirty BTC,” while Rodriguez encouraged Twitter hackers to use Whirlpool in 2020 and described mixing in messenger WhatsApp as “money laundering for Bitcoin.”
Autism defense
Hill’s attorney argued that his client’s newly diagnosed autism impaired his judgment, giving him a “magical-thinking, autistic vision” that non-custodial substances protected him from legal liability, according to Hill’s attorney. The anger‘S report.
Although Judge Cote acknowledged that the diagnosis would make prison “more difficult” for Hill, she rejected claims that the crime was minimized and stated that “people need to be deterred” from such actions.
She then reduced his sentence from the 60 months requested by the prosecutor to 48 months.
Hill will begin his sentence on January 2 next year, while Rodriguez is due to surrender to police custody on December 19.
‘Double standard’
Privacy advocates told earlier Declutter The case could have far-reaching implications for developers’ ability to write open-source software while free from fear of prosecution.
Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo Platform, explains Declutter that the Samourai ruling points to a double standard in financial enforcement and that targeting privacy tools is “a two-tiered legal system.”
US authorities have “made it clear that they do not want crypto users to enjoy privacy,” he said, calling the ruling “a chilling moment” in which Samourai’s cash-like privacy tools are being treated as criminal.
Noting that the U.S. government is “setting an example” for the Samourai’s founders, Stadelmann said the industry should push for presidential pardons while continuing to develop decentralized tools to “fight back against the surveillance state.”
Rodriguez has launched a petition calling on President Donald Trump to pardon both developers.
“Developers should not be liable for the actions of bad actors using their software,” Rodriguez said tweeted Wednesday.
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