https://www.coindesk.com/policy/202...s-arrested-and-charged-with-money-laundering/ Samourai Wallet Founders Arrested and Charged With Money Laundering Prosecutors are alleging Samourai Wallet laundered over $100 million in criminal proceeds. By Nikhilesh De, Cheyenne Ligon Apr 25, 2024 at 3:10 a.m. Updated Apr 25, 2024 at 4:52 a.m. May 29-31, 2024 - Austin, TexasThe biggest and most established global hub for everything crypto, blockchain and Web3.Register Now Federal prosecutors charged Samurai Wallet founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill with conspiracy to commit money laundering on Wednesday, as the U.S. government continues its approach to prosecuting crypto mixing tools that may be used by illicit actors and foreign governments to hide fund transfers. According to a press release issued Wednesday, the pair developed, marketed and operated the mixer, which "facilitated more than $100 million in money laundering transactions from illegal dark web markets." Samourai overall facilitated around $2 billion in "unlawful transactions” between 2015 and the present, the release alleged. An accompanying indictment said this figure was calculated by converting the value of bitcoin laundered through the funds to U.S. dollars, based on bitcoin's price "at the time of each transaction." Rodriguez, 35, and Hill, 65, collected approximately $4.5 million in fees for their mixing services, according to prosecutors. Different features had different pool fees, according to the indictment. The pair are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years and five years, respectively. Rodriguez was arrested on Wednesday morning and will be arraigned in Pennsylvania today or tomorrow, according to the press release. Hill, Samourai Wallet’s CTO, was arrested on Wednesday morning in Portugal and will be extradited to the U.S. The Samourai Wallet website, which was hosted in Iceland, has also been seized, and a seizure warrant issued for Samourai’s mobile application to the Google Play Store. Samourai Wallet's website's home page was replaced with this warning from U.S. officials after the mixer's developers were charged Wednesday. (Samourai Wallet) Samourai has been in development since 2015, the DOJ press release said, and Rodriguez and Hill "encouraged and openly invited users to launder criminal proceeds" through the mixer, the press release said, citing tweets and private messages. The mobile application has seen more than 100,000 downloads. "At Samourai we are entirely focused on the censorship resistance and black/grey circular economy," one private message attributed to Hill said. "This implies no foreseeable mass adoption, although black/grey markets have already started to expand during covid and will continue to do so post-covid…" The pair sought investors by marketing the same premise – that "dark/grey market participants" would be included in their user base, the release said. A screenshot from marketing materials listed "Restricted Markets" as a target demographic, alongside online gambling and asset protection. Wednesday's arrests come as the DOJ prepares for its upcoming trial against Roman Storm, a developer and co-founder of crypto mixing service Tornado Cash. That case is being pursued by the DOJ's Southern District of New York division. Recently, the DOJ's Washington, D.C. unit successfully won a conviction against Roman Sterlingov, the operator of crypto mixer Bitcoin Fog, on money laundering charges.
As you said a long time ago, the best thing for bitcoin would be for all the developers to leave the US. At the same time, if they really were encouraging users to launder criminal proceeds, then I can understand, but why are they only ever going after crypto? US banks literally launder USD and nothing happens. I'm all for cracking down on crime, but when the investigations are targeted towards only one area, I have to think that this selective bias is the bigger crime. And this of course explain the mini dump we just had.
There is not one crypto entity on the planet that will escape the DOJ. Sends them an email to hire the same law firm that represented Coinbase.
If your entire business model is money laundering, can you really be surprised? Sure they could be facilitating payments for kidnapping, murder for hire, blackmail, bribery, etc. But who could possibly see them eventually running up against either criminals or a government sick of their crap? In a way this is the best thing that could have happened to them. Imagine if a victim of one of their "clients" had decided to take revenge? If you don't think that happens, you've probably never heard of mossad. The naivety of the crypto crowd is sometimes astounding. "Let's set up an anonymous international payment scheme without the backing of a major world power and see what happens to us!" Leaving the US is not enough. A business like this can make enemies straight from a freaking nightmare.
There is no business, Samourai wallet is a free and open source non-custodial wallet The people got arrested because they fucked up, tweeting something to the effect that the Russians are welcome to use their wallet,
No they charged fees " to use the ricochet feature, Samourai charges 0.002 BTC for every 4 hop ricochet transaction." https://www.fxempire.com/crypto/wallets/samouraiwallet#price Not that the idea that if they were running a free money laundering platform that would somehow make it okay makes any sense...
%% LOL exactly\even the chicoms outlawed them. [Big banks also have a track record of big fines ; but that's not accurate @ all, NoahA \to pretend they never get punished. My dad was a banker + that laughable, with all due respect\ to lump banks\ in with cryptocr*p] NOT saying SEC is perfect\they are getting sued over stupid climate change rules\LOL. They should be sued, with all due respect