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In a stark escalation of U.S. crackdowns on crypto privacy tools, William Lonergan Hill, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Samourai Wallet, was sentenced to four years in federal prison on November 19 for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business that laundered over $237 million in illicit Bitcoin. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote in Manhattan follows the five-year maximum term imposed on CEO Keonne Rodriguez on November 6, capping a probe that exposed the duo’s decade-long facilitation of dark web crimes.
Hill, 67, a U.S. national extradited from Portugal in 2024, pleaded guilty in July to a single count under 18 U.S.C. § 371, admitting Samourai’s “Whirlpool” mixer—launched in 2015—obscured origins of funds from drug trafficking, cyber hacks, frauds, murder-for-hire plots, and child exploitation sites. Prosecutors, led by Acting U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos, traced 2.1 million BTC transactions via blockchain forensics, revealing the app’s deliberate design to evade AML laws. Hill’s internal chats boasted of making funds “untraceable,” while Rodriguez pitched it as “money laundering for Bitcoin.”
The court ordered Hill to three years’ supervised release and a $250,000 fine, alongside forfeiture of $6.37 million, the samouraiwallet.com domain, and its Google Play app—mirroring Rodriguez’s penalties. Judge Cote varied downward from the five-year max due to Hill’s recent autism diagnosis and age, but stressed: “This operation made victim recovery impossible, profiting from crime’s shadows.”
The case, indicted in April 2024 and superseding in June 2025, echoes Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm conviction, signaling DOJ’s zero-tolerance for mixers under the Bank Secrecy Act. Privacy advocates decry it as overreach: “Innovation stifled by hindsight liability,” tweeted Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jennifer Granick. Yet, Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin hailed the traceability: “No more safe havens for illicit flows.”
Samourai, downloaded 100,000+ times, shuttered post-arrest; its team insists the founders acted independently, vowing enhanced compliance. With $237 million forfeited, the saga underscores crypto’s privacy paradox: Tools for freedom or shields for felons? As SEC eyes more enforcements, executives brace—jail time now trumps code anonymity.
