The US prosecutor’s office accused the creators of Samourai Wallet of laundering more than $100 million

US authorities accuse the creators of the anonymous BTC wallet Samourai Wallet of money laundering. Project leader Keonn Rodriguez was detained yesterday. The company’s CTO, William Lonergan Hill, was arrested in Portugal, and the issue of extraditing him to the United States is now being decided.

According to the prosecutor’s office, from 2015 to February of this year, the creators of the cryptomixer operated an illegal money transfer business.

“The business executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and laundered over $100 million in criminal proceeds from illegal darknet markets like Silk Road and Hydra from hackers and extortionists,” the agency said in a statement.

Currently, with the help of Icelandic law enforcement officers, the Samourai servers and domain have been seized. In addition, a warrant was received for the arrest of the company’s application on Google Play — it had more than 100 thousand downloads.

The Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet, with a focus on increased privacy, offered several services to hide the source of the origin of assets and confuse the chains of recipients of funds.

The platform has a Whirlpool feature that is part of CoinJoin’s broader data privacy solution. With its help, you can separate senders from recipients, thus complicating the process of monitoring the movement of funds.

Let us remind you that in recent years the authorities of various countries have been tightening control over crypto mixers. For example, in the United States there are calls to declare them “money laundering centers” that threaten the national security of the state.

The US Treasury thus intends to combat the illegal use of all the capabilities of the cryptocurrency mixer ecosystem by terrorists and various criminals.

“Today’s actions underscore Treasury’s commitment to combating cybercriminals and terrorist groups,” Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo said in late 2023.

Let us recall that in 2022, the American authorities added to the sanctions list the crypto mixer Tornado Cash, which could have been used by hackers from the North Korean group Lazarus to launder money stolen from decentralized platforms.