Samourai Wallet

What it was

Samourai was a Bitcoin wallet for Android. The keys stayed on the phone, and the feature that defined the product was coinjoin: a transaction many people build together, so that an observer reading the chain cannot say which output belongs to which input. Samourai ran that as a service called Whirlpool. A second feature, Ricochet, added extra hops between a user's coins and the address they were paying, so the receiving end saw a transaction several steps removed from where the coins had been.

Very few mobile wallets did any of this. Coinjoin implementations at the time were desktop software, and putting one on a phone put a privacy tool in the same place people actually keep money. That is the reason the wallet mattered to the people who used it, and it is also the activity the United States government charged.

The service ran from about 2015 until February 2024, according to the announcement of the charges by Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation. It is not running now. The domain and the Android application were forfeited to the United States by court order in November 2025, and no successor operates under the name. No mark ships with this entry, because the only place the project published one was a domain that no longer belongs to it.

No incorporation for Samourai Wallet could be established from a primary source, which is why structure here reads Undocumented rather than Unincorporated. The two founders are named below, because they are the principals of this entry and the record is their own.

On the record

The case is United States v. Rodriguez and Hill, No. 1:24-cr-00082, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The docket referred to below is the public RECAP copy, last updated 24 November 2025. The Department of Justice press releases could not be opened from here: justice.gov returns an automated-traffic interstitial. The same releases, republished by IRS Criminal Investigation, are the sources used instead.

Charged. A sealed two-count indictment was filed on 14 February 2024 and unsealed on 24 April 2024. Keonne Rodriguez, described in the announcement as chief executive and co-founder, and William Lonergan Hill, described as chief technology officer and co-founder, were each charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, carrying a maximum of 20 years, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, carrying a maximum of five years. A superseding indictment on 24 June 2025 charged the same two counts, citing Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(h) for the first and Section 371 for the second. The announcement alleged that Samourai executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and facilitated more than $100 million in money laundering transactions from darknet markets. Those were allegations at the charging stage. Rodriguez was arrested in Pennsylvania and Hill in Portugal. Both pleaded not guilty, and moved to dismiss the indictment on 29 May 2025.

Seized. At the time of the April 2024 charges, Samourai's web servers and its domain were seized in coordination with Icelandic authorities, and a seizure warrant was served on Google to remove the Android application from the Play Store in the United States.

Pleaded. On 30 July 2025, before United States District Judge Denise L. Cote, both men pleaded guilty to the second count only: conspiracy to operate a money transmitting business knowing the business transmitted crime proceeds, with a statutory maximum of five years.

Sentenced. Rodriguez was sentenced on 6 November 2025 to 60 months in prison and three years of supervised release, with a fine of $250,000. The judgment records that all remaining open counts, including the money laundering conspiracy, were dismissed on the motion of the United States, and orders forfeiture of $6,367,139.69, the domain samouraiwallet.com and the Samourai Wallet Google Play application. Hill was sentenced on 19 November 2025 to four years and the same three years of supervised release and $250,000 fine. The forfeiture money judgment entered against them was $237,832,360.55, of which $6,367,139.69, described in the sentencing announcement as the fees Samourai earned, has been paid.

No fraud finding was made by any court in this case, and the entry carries no Fraud tag: the offence of conviction is a conspiracy offence about operating without a licence. Both defendants were advised of their right to appeal at sentencing. The docket as retrieved records no notice of appeal.