Security News > 2024 > April > US charges Samourai cryptomixer founders for laundering $100 million
Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for laundering more than $100 million from various criminal enterprises through Samourai, a cryptocurrency mixer service they ran for nearly a decade.
In addition to crypto mixing services, Samourai also offered a service called "Ricochet," which allowed users to send cryptocurrency using additional and unnecessary intermediate transactions to thwart law enforcement and crypto exchange efforts to track funds sourced from criminal activity.
This money laundering activity allegedly earned the two founders around $4.5 million in fees for Whirlpool and Ricochet transactions.
Samourai's Wallet mobile application was also downloaded over 100,000 times, allowing users to store private keys for BTC addresses they controlled and exchange funds with other Samourai users in anonymous financial transactions.
"While offering Samourai as a 'privacy' service, the defendants knew that it was a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion," the DOJ said.
"Samourai laundered over $100 million of crime proceeds originating from, among other criminal sources, illegal dark web markets, such as Silk Road and Hydra Market; various wire fraud and computer fraud schemes, including a web-server intrusion, a spearphishing scheme, and schemes to defraud multiple decentralized finance protocols; and other illegal."