It is expected that the co -founders of the Samourai wallet will declare charges that, through their Bitcoin mixing service, they helped the computer pirates and other cybercriminals to wash more than $ 100 million in dirty money, according to the judicial presentations on Tuesday.
Both Keonne Rodríguez and William Lonergan Hill initially declared themselves innocent after being arrested and accused of a conspiracy charge to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate a business transmission business without a license last April, charges for which they face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. His trial was scheduled to start at the Manhattan district court for the South District of New York (SDNY) in early November.
However, the Judicial Orders of the Tuesday of the District Judge Denise L. Cote, the judge who supervises the case, indicates that both men will change their statements to guilty during the consecutive judicial hearings in person on Wednesday.
The decision is produced in the middle of the current trial of Roman Storm, the Cash Tornado developer, another cryptographic mixing tool centered on privacy, which is also held in the South District of Manhattan, in front of the district judge Katherine Polk Failla. Storm (as well as one of his colleagues, Roman Semenov, who remains in general) faces the same positions as Rodríguez and Hill, with an additional position that conspired to violate international sanctions. Storm, who has maintained his innocence and declared himself innocent of the charges, faces up to 45 years in prison if he is convicted for the three positions. Storm’s defense rested his case on Tuesday, and the closing arguments are expected to be wrapped on Wednesday, leaving the jury to begin their deliberations.
It is not clear why Rodríguez and Hill have now decided to change their statements to guilty. A Rodriguez lawyer did not respond to the request for Comments from Coindesk at the time of publication.
The couple has made several offers so that the case against them is discarded. After the United States Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, sent a memorandum to the personnel of the Justice Department (DOJ) informing them that the Department of Justice would no longer pursue criminal cases against cryptographic companies that involve regulatory violations or “the acts of their end users”, the lawyers of Samourai Wallet requested their case of their case, something that seemed to be considered for at least two weeks The days was notified despite the transmission.
Defense lawyers also tried to produce the case following the revelations that prosecutors allegedly retained evidence of the defense that the lawyers of the network for the application of financial crimes (FINCEN) did not believe that Samourai’s wallet was qualified as a transmitter of money and, therefore, they would not be required to be registered as such. The prosecutors denied that their late dissemination violated the rights of due process of the accused, telling the Court that the “legal opinions” are not Brady materials.
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