MIXER FOUNDERS BEWARE! DOJ goes after Samourai founders and CEO
The DOJ is charging crypto mixer Samourai founders with money laundering and unlicensed transmitting offenses.
The Department of Justice is charging Keonne Rodriguez, CEO and co-founder, and William Lonergan, CTO and co-founder, of Samourai Wallet with money laundering and unlicensed transmitting offenses. The allegations linked them to transactions from Silk Road and Hydra Market.
“As alleged, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill are responsible for developing, marketing, and operating Samourai, a cryptocurrency mixing service that executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and served as a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering. Rodriguez and Hill allegedly knowingly facilitated the laundering of over $100 million of criminal proceeds from the Silk Road, Hydra Market, and a host of other computer hacking and fraud campaigns.”
— US Attorney Damian Williams
The DOJ coordinate with Iceland authorities, seizing Samourai’s web servers and domain.
This wasn’t the first time the DOJ went after mixers.
In March, the Washington federal court convicted the founder of Bitcoin Fog with money laundering. The conviction of Bitcoin Fog came after the Bitfinex case’s Ilya Lichtenstein testified against the mixer he used for money laundering.
The US government has also blocked Sinbad, another crypto mixing service, in Nov 2023. In the DOJ’s case against Binance, it accused the centralized exchange of accepting $270mn from outlawed Best Mixer.
National authorities including USA, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, with support from Europol have also collectively taken down ChipMixer’s infrastructure for the crypto mixer’s alleged involvement in money laundering.
Even Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested by Dutch authorities, saying he was employed by a company linked to the Russian security agency FSB. This came after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioned the crypto mixer.
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