Samourai wallet website seized by DOJ, developers arrested

[bbc.reporter]

It appears that after the arrest of the developer of Tornado Cash, I reckon no platform creators and software developers for privacy and anonymity in the cryptospace is safe. Will we witness the arrest of Monero and Zcash developers? This will certainly be very headshaking.



Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill Are Charged with Operating Samourai Wallet, an Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business That Executed Over $2 Billion in Unlawful Transactions and Laundered Over $100 Million in Criminal Proceeds

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Thomas Fattorusso, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”); and James Smith, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today the unsealing of an Indictment charging KEONNE RODRIGUEZ, the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of Samourai Wallet (“Samourai”), and WILLIAM LONERGAN HILL, the Chief Technology Officer and also a co-founder of Samourai, with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.  These charges arise from the defendants’ development, marketing, and operation of a cryptocurrency mixer that executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and facilitated more than $100 million in money laundering transactions from illegal dark web markets, such as Silk Road and Hydra Market; a web-server intrusion; a spearphishing scheme; and schemes to defraud multiple decentralized finance protocols.  RODRIGUEZ was arrested this morning and is expected to be presented today or tomorrow before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Western District of Pennsylvania.  HILL was arrested this morning in Portugal based on the U.S. criminal charges.  The United States will seek HILL’s extradition to stand trial in the United States.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman.

Read in full https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founders-and-ceo-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-arrested-and-charged-money-laundering

[AB de Royse777]

Will we witness the arrest of Monero and Zcash developers?

It will not surprise anyone.

In documents, law books - it is allowed with terms. Big brothers will always use the terms in their service to take everything from you.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

The truth is that these are dark times for those of us who one day thought that a world that massively used P2P cash without intermediaries would be feasible. We are heading towards total control and the worst thing is that many people embrace it willingly.

[The Cryptovator]

Day by day, it will become very hard to hide ourselves as crypto users. We often want to increase privacy due to security reasons. Everyone, we aren't criminals here, but everyone likes to increase their privacy. But the fucking centralised government, which always wants to monitor us, doesn't like our privacy. So all the privacy services on the crypto will be identified and action taken against them. Already, many mixers and similar services have been seized. It's an ongoing process to break our privacy. 

[JeromeTash]

I think when you are a developer of a privacy tool or an advocate of privacy, you instantly become an enemy of different states and law enforcement agencies. Because they love to snoop around people's personal lives and finances, denying them that makes them hunt for you.

I always wonder why developers of Privacy leaning tools such as wallet and exchanges do not make themselves anonymous for safety purposes. Create a decentralized privacy tool and stay anonymous, like satoshi did. They will have no way of arresting you.

[tabas]

The truth is that these are dark times for those of us who one day thought that a world that massively used P2P cash without intermediaries would be feasible. We are heading towards total control and the worst thing is that many people embrace it willingly.

Dark times indeed. Privacy is important and the FED are showing that no one's going to value it anymore soon if they keep on chasing like this the services and projects that are giving every individual the increased in privacy for their transactions.
Anyway, there was already a thread about it that was posted yesterday: Samourai Wallet seized by the feds

[nc50lc]

Incidentally, Sparrow Wallet removed all of its samurai-whirlpool-related features right after that incident,
in this commit: github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/commit/1676676e06d8e7774d9eddc2f08663b1a2c49e3a

And even if an older version with whirlpool is used, there'll be no Samurai Whirlpool Coordinator to process it.

[shield132]

It appears that after the arrest of the developer of Tornado Cash, I reckon no platform creators and software developers for privacy and anonymity in the cryptospace is safe. Will we witness the arrest of Monero and Zcash developers? This will certainly be very headshaking.

No more room for privacy, not anymore. Many exchanges, including centralized and instant exchanges, many of them do not support Monero. There is not much talk about Zcash, if I notice articles, they are mostly about Monero, so I expect that Monero might become illegal to mine and use, this coin will be blocked probably. Anything that improves your privacy in financial world, will be blocked and the user will be highly punished. It won't surprise me if VPN and Tor will be banned soon.

I think that it was inevitable. In 2016 and yearly years, privacy was not a problem because these coins weren't popular and weren't massively adopted. Now they are very popular and accepted in many places, this is a threat for FED, they'll do whatever it takes to kill it but you know what makes me smile a little bit? They are banning mixers, privacy wallets, soon they'll probably ban privacy coins but something new will pop up, something better, stronger and it will be very difficult for them. Something new will always pop up, so nothing ends here.

[dkbit98]

Incidentally, Sparrow Wallet removed all of its samurai-whirlpool-related features right after that incident,
in this commit: github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/commit/1676676e06d8e7774d9eddc2f08663b1a2c49e3a

Yeah, they released new wallet version 1.9.0 yesterday and I think they would be next in the line to get seized and arrested if they didn't remove all Samourai Whirlpool stuff.
I think there are also some hardware wallet manufacturers who used to work with Samourai/Whirlpool and they might do the same thing, if they didn't do it already.

Remove Whirlpool client, and other Soroban related features and dependencies

https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.9.0

[SickDayIn]

I think that it was inevitable. In 2016 and yearly years, privacy was not a problem because these coins weren't popular and weren't massively adopted. Now they are very popular and accepted in many places, this is a threat for FED, they'll do whatever it takes to kill it but you know what makes me smile a little bit? They are banning mixers, privacy wallets, soon they'll probably ban privacy coins but something new will pop up, something better, stronger and it will be very difficult for them. Something new will always pop up, so nothing ends here.

What you have stated is a very important point - anything that the FED finds is a threat they will try and take down. For example, I have observed that privacy coins in Australia are completely banned/illegal, including Monero, Dash and ZCash. It won't be long before they become banned in places like the U.S.A. It's sad and disappointing, and I'm not sure if anything could be replaced by that is "better, stronger" if it's actually a policy based issue.

When the FEDs of this world do cryptocurrency investigations, using software like Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Eliptic etc (blockchain big data analysis), they encounter issues when cross-chain hopping occurs, or coins go into mixing services. Banning Samurai Wallet is one step to reduce the options available, and banning privacy coins is also another step. Soon we will see any decentralised exchange smart contract developers in trouble also..

[Pmalek]

Incidentally, Sparrow Wallet removed all of its samurai-whirlpool-related features right after that incident,
in this commit: github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/commit/1676676e06d8e7774d9eddc2f08663b1a2c49e3a

And even if an older version with whirlpool is used, there'll be no Samurai Whirlpool Coordinator to process it.

The Samurai team released a decentralized Soroban whirlpool at the beginning of April. Wouldn't it be possible to switch to a different coordinator using Soroban? From the little I read about it, Soroban was working and had decent traffic. I wonder if the government-friendly Wasabi wallet will ever get targeted. It probably never will.

[bbc.reporter]

Time has been moving very fast. I am shaking my head that it has been 2 months already since the capture and arrest of these developers for anonymity and privacy protection!

In any case, this donation website is being shared on social media. Donate only any amount that you can afford. According to the website, some of the funds will be used for the legal defense of Rodriquez and Hill.

https://p2prights.org/donate.html

[bbc.reporter]

After the removal of Tornado Cash from the sanctions list and the chance of Roman Storm's case to be dropped, this news update on Samourai wallet will certainly be another victory if the case against the developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill will also be dropped.

These are the victories given to us by the Donald's administration that are not celebrated by the cryptospace community.



New York prosecutors are seemingly considering whether or not to drop their case against Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, according to a Monday court filing.

In a joint letter to District Judge Richard Berman of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), both prosecutors and lawyers for Rodriguez and Hill requested that the case be granted a 16-day continuance, or extension, “while the Government determines its position” in response to the defense’s request that the case be dismissed under the auspices of U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent memo to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) staff.

In his April 7 memo, Blanche announced that the DOJ’s crypto unit, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) would be disbanded, and instructed staff to no longer bring cases against crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets “for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/04/29/samourai-wallet-prosecutors-are-considering-dropping-charges-under-new-doj-crypto-enforcement-priorities-filing

[JeromeTash]

-snip-

it's a big win, but I think the reason there is not so much celebration is that people are still uncertain what the Trump administration will do in the next coming years. You know they are full of twists and turns and also after Trump, the next administration could easily re-introduce the crazy witch hunt against "crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets"
Let's watch the space.

[mikel_012]

New York prosecutors are seemingly considering whether or not to drop their case against Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, according to a Monday court filing.

In a joint letter to District Judge Richard Berman of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), both prosecutors and lawyers for Rodriguez and Hill requested that the case be granted a 16-day continuance, or extension, “while the Government determines its position” in response to the defense’s request that the case be dismissed under the auspices of U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent memo to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) staff.

In his April 7 memo, Blanche announced that the DOJ’s crypto unit, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) would be disbanded, and instructed staff to no longer bring cases against crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets “for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/04/29/samourai-wallet-prosecutors-are-considering-dropping-charges-under-new-doj-crypto-enforcement-priorities-filing

Great news! Privacy is winning and conquering ground for a change. Trump is doing a great work by telling the usa agencies to not witch hunt people who care about privacy. One thing is to go against drug dealers and money laundeers, another is to go against a developer who built a website and a wallet software.

[Darker45]

-snip-

it's a big win, but I think the reason there is not so much celebration is that people are still uncertain what the Trump administration will do in the next coming years. You know they are full of twists and turns and also after Trump, the next administration could easily re-introduce the crazy witch hunt against "crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets"
Let's watch the space.

It's not yet a win. There's no celebration because there's nothing to celebrate yet. Both Rodriguez and Hill remain under arrest until today. They're not freed yet. Dropping the case is only considered. Whether the case will indeed be dropped is yet to be determined.

However, the US Deputy Attorney General's memo to his staff to end "Regulation by Persecution" is indeed something the crypto community should be happy about. It's a victory of the entire community. It's a victory of reason and fairness. However, it might indeed be temporary.

[bbc.reporter]

-snip-

it's a big win, but I think the reason there is not so much celebration is that people are still uncertain what the Trump administration will do in the next coming years. You know they are full of twists and turns and also after Trump, the next administration could easily re-introduce the crazy witch hunt against "crypto exchanges, mixing services, or offline wallets"
Let's watch the space.

Hehe it appears that everyone has forgotten that it was the Biden administration that started the crackdown on the cryptospace and the Trump administration is the procrypto administration. However, we cannot blame the skepticism.

Also, @Darker45 is correct. Despite this positive update, it is still not a win. We should give this more time until the developers have been declared innocent of all charges and removed from the custody of the government. I am very much bullish on what will be coming next, however.

[nonlogs]

Maybe build a country for privacy.

[mindrust]

If they arrest the Monero devs some day, that day will be end of crypto we knew.

Nobody will ever have the guts to code a project with any privacy features. I think we are already there tbh.

Exch recently went down too.

Whenever a dev thinks about starting a new project he will ask himself: “Can I afford to be jailed?”

Nope. It is not worth it.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Maybe build a country for privacy.

How about islands. Have you own island. Remote area. Produce your own electricity, use satellite internet, grow fresh vegetable, farm pig, cows and sheep, catch fish. Invite other like minded Bitcoin users to make your own land.