The US Department of Justice has arrested the co-founders of the Samourai Wallet on charges of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transfer business.
The platform’s CEO, Keonne Rodriguez, and the Chief Technology Officer, William Lonergan Hull, are being accused of facilitating $2 billion in illegal transactions. They are also charged with money laundering on the dark web.
Today, the #FBI, IRS, and partners arrested the founders of the Samourai Wallet cryptocurrency service, which allowed criminals to launder over $1.7B in funds. Read more about FBI Cyber's continuing mission to shut down fraudulent crypto services. https://t.co/zUBgiSLhjP
— FBI (@FBI) April 24, 2024
According to the charges, the two “knowingly facilitated the laundering of over $100 million in criminal proceeds from Silk Road, Hydra Market, and a host of other computer hacking and fraud campaigns.”
The prosecution also mentions “Whirlpool,” a crypto mixing service offered by Samourai. It says that the duo encouraged criminals to launder money on the platform through a private message on X (Twitter).
Rodriguez was arrested in the US, and is set to appear before a Pennsylvanian judge. The US government is also seeking the extradition of Hill, who was arrested in Portugal. The Samourai Wallet app has also been taken down from the Google Play Store.
The news of the arrest of the Samourai Wallet co-founders triggered market panic that saw Bitcoin and several altcoins register price dips.
BTC is down 3.78% in the last 24 hours to trade at $63,971 at 08:19 EST. The largest altcoin, Ether, has also posted a 4.61% price dip to trade at $3,128.
The largest memecoin, DOGE has seen a 7.5% price drop while PEPE is down by nearly 5% and WIF plunged by over 15%.
The price decline has seen $208 million worth of long positions being liquidated from the crypto market in the last 24 hours, according to Coinglass.
Some in the crypto community criticized the arrests, saying the two developers may go to prison for simply writing code.
The developers of Samourai were arrested this morning.
One extradited from Portugal.
Samourai is a bitcoin wallet that makes bitcoin private.
These developers face up to 25 yrs in prison for writing code.
The US is sending a message.
No transaction will be private. pic.twitter.com/GupLtMuHD8
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth 🦄 (@RyanSAdams) April 24, 2024
Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were also charged last year for facilitating money laundering.
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