Prosecutors in the case of Samourai’s wallet have denied accusations that they suppressed critical evidence in their criminal case against the two co -founders of the Crypto mixing service, Keonne Rodríguez and William Lonergan Hill.
In a letter to the court presented on Friday, prosecutors urged Judge Richard Berman, from the Southern New York District (SDNY) to deny Rodríguez and Hill’s recent motion for a litigate audience to be the late dissemination of the government of a conversation between prosecutors and the network of application of financial services (Finn). In that conversation, which took place six months before the positions were presented, Finn officials told prosecutors that Samourai’s wallet did not fulfill its definition of a money transmission business and, therefore, did not need a license to operate.
Despite Finn’s guide, prosecutors continued with their case, accusing both Rodríguez and Hill with a conspiracy charge to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate a money transmission business without a license. Through Samourai’s wallet, prosecutors alleged that the two men “intentionally and successfully washed more than $ 100 million in the income of the crime of all kinds” and explicitly marketed their services to “participants of the dark/gray market”, including hackers and scammers.
Not telling the defense about his communication with Finnn until last month, Rodríguez and Hill’s lawyers say that the government violated due process: a so -called Brady’s rape, thus called by the historic case of the Brady V Supreme Court. Maryland in 1963, in which the Court had to deliver any exulporage or material evidence (basically, suggesting that the indicable is not the defense of the crime that has been charged in which he charged the defense of defense to the defense of defense to the defense to the defense of the defense of the defense. Timely way.
However, prosecutors have denied that they have committed any violation of Brady in the case of Samourai’s wallet. In their letter to the judge, they presented a series of reasons why the moment of their revelation of Finn’s conversation was a clean play. First, they argued that their conversation with FINCEN employees represented their “individual, informal and warned opinions” about whether Samourai’s wallet would have been forced to register as a money transmission business, instead of a formal finding of the regulator.
“The courts have repeatedly maintained that this type of legal opinions, or opinions of any kind are not Brady’s materials; the facts are Brady’s materials,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors also said that, even if the material were relevant in the case of the defense, they had given it to the defense seven months before the trial, writing: “There is no need for judicial intervention when the defendants have received discovery materials sufficiently before the trial to use the information effectively.”
In their own letter to the Court at the beginning of this week, Samourai Wallet’s lawyers said their clients had been unfairly harmed by the lack of dissemination of the government, arguing that the bail decision of the magistrate judge or the decision of the Court in an early motion to dismiss the case completely could have impacted.
Prosecutors retreated against this argument, saying that most of the case against Samourai’s wallet was not linked to the money transmission position and, on the other hand, was tied to Rodríguez and the alleged Hill money laundering scheme, the two most serious charges against them, with a strong sentence of maximum prison of 20 years.
The return part of Brady’s possible violation occurs after the defense asked the prosecutors to leave their case under the auspices of the so -called MEMORANDO BLANCHE, a recent memorandum of the attached attorney general Todd Blanche, ordering the personnel of the Department of Justice of the United States (DOJ) to reduce their priorities of application of the crypto. According to the Blanche memorandum, prosecutors were ordered to stop looking for litigation against cryptography exchanges or mixing services for the actions of its end users.
After the application, prosecutors met with the defense to consider the application on April 10. Almost a month later, the government has not yet reached a decision in any way, that some former SDNY prosecutors have characterized as unusual in conversations with Coindesk.
