NEW YORK – Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday 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 a hearing of about an hour in federal court in midtown Manhattan.
Rodriguez’s five-year sentence is the maximum legal sentence for his crime. In the government’s sentencing memorandum submitted to the court on Oct. 31, prosecutors urged Judge Cote to impose that maximum sentence, writing that the couple intentionally and knowingly laundered “proceeds from drug trafficking, dark web markets, cyber intrusions, fraud, murder-for-hire schemes, and a child pornography website” through Samourai Wallet. In their own sentencing presentation, Rodriguez’s attorneys 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 transfer business. Although the couple fought the case for more than a year, they reached a surprise deal with prosecutors in July, agreeing to plead guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to transmit money without a license in exchange for the money laundering conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, being dropped.
The couple’s change of plea came amid the trial of fellow developer Roman Storm, 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 of the charge of transmitting money without a license, 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 hung charges.
Hill is scheduled to be sentenced by the same judge on Friday at 11 a.m. ET.
