NEW YORK – Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for his role in creating a bitcoin mixing service that prosecutors say was used to launder $237 million in dirty money.
District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), who oversaw the case, handed down the sentence after an approximately hour-long hearing at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan.
Rodriguez’s five-year sentence is the statutory maximum for his crime. In the government’s sentencing brief submitted to the court on Oct. 31, prosecutors urged Judge Cote to impose the maximum sentence, writing that the pair willfully and knowingly laundered “proceeds from drug trafficking, darknet marketplaces, cyber intrusions, fraud, murder-for-hire wallet websites and a child pornography website and a.” In his own sentencing, Rodriguez’s lawyers suggested a sentence of one year and one day in prison.
Rodriguez and fellow Samourai Wallet developer William Lonergan Hill were arrested last April and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business. Although the pair fought the case for more than a year, they struck a surprise deal with prosecutors in July, agreeing to plead guilty to the lesser charge of unlicensed money transfer conspiracy in exchange for the money laundering charge — which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison — being dropped.
The pair’s change in plea came amid co-developer Roman Storm’s trial, also in the Southern District of New York. Like Rodriguez and Hill, Storm – one of the developers of Tornado Cash, a once-popular crypto-privacy tool – was charged with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business and conspiracy to commit money laundering, with an additional charge of conspiracy to violate international sanctions. A Manhattan jury found Storm guilty only on the unlicensed wire transfer charge, and failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the other two charges. Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they plan to retry Storm on the two suspended charges.
Hill is scheduled to be sentenced by the same judge on Friday at 11 A.M.
