The co-founders of Samourai Wallet are expected to plead guilty to charges that, via their bitcoin mixing service, they helped hackers and other cyber criminals launder over $100 million in dirty money, according to Tuesday court filings.
Both Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill initially pleaded not guilty after they were arrested and charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business last April — charges for which they face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Their trial was slated to begin in Manhattan’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) in early November.
However, Tuesday court orders from District Judge Denise L. Cote, the judge overseeing the case, indicate that both men will change their pleas to guilty during back-to-back in-person court hearings on Wednesday.
The decision comes amid the ongoing trial of Roman Storm, the developer of Tornado Cash — another privacy-focused crypto mixing tool — which is also being held in Manhattan’s Southern District, in front of District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. Storm (as well as one of his colleagues, Roman Semenov, who remains at large) faces the same charges as Rodriguez and Hill, with an additional charge that he conspired to violate international sanctions. Storm, who has maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty to the charges, faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all three counts. Storm’s defense rested its case on Tuesday, and closing arguments are expected to wrap on Wednesday, leaving the jury to begin its deliberations.
It is unclear why Rodriguez and Hill have decided to now change their pleas to guilty. A lawyer for Rodriguez did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment by press time.
The pair have made several bids to have the case against them tossed out. After U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a memo to Department of Justice (DOJ) staff informing them that the DOJ would no longer be pursuing criminal cases against crypto companies involving regulatory violations or “the acts of their end users,” lawyers for Samourai Wallet asked the government to drop their case — something prosecutors seemingly considered for at least two weeks before deciding to move forward despite the Blanche memo.
Lawyers for the defense also attempted to have the case thrown out in the wake of revelations that prosecutors allegedly withheld evidence from the defense that lawyers for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) didn’t think Samourai Wallet qualified as a money transmitter and thus would not be required to register as such. Prosecutors denied that their late disclosure violated the defendants’ due-process rights, telling the court that “legal opinions” are not Brady material.
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