Samourai Wallet Hearing Sets Key Dates For Criminal Trial

In a hearing in downtown Manhattan today, a slew of new hearing dates were set in the criminal trial of Samourai Wallet co-creators Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. The cofounders were charged in April of 2024 with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to run an unlicensed money transmitting business. Samourai was publicly-available software that connected users to a “mix” bitcoin to break the on-chain custody trail of funds, enabling a degree of user privacy for the default-transparent cryptocurrency.

Ahead of their full trial starting on November 3, pre-trial motions in the case will be filed beginning on May 7, with oral arguments on motions scheduled for 10am on July 16 in the courtroom of Southern District of New York Judge Richard Berman.

Rodriguez and Hill appeared in good spirits for the first hearing in their case since September of 2024. Hill, who is living in Portugal while on pre-trial release, was granted a preliminary exemption from attendance at pre-trial hearings, on the basis of the cost of traveling from Portugal. Other procedural dates set during today's hearing included July 15 for the disclosure of planned expert witnesses by government prosecutors; and an August 8 deadline for the defense to disclose its expert witnesses. Though unable to comment on proceedings, Rodriguez directed supporters to the P2P Rights Fund, which is funding the pair's legal defense.

That Rodriguez and Hill are charged only with conspiracy, rather than directly with money laundering or operating an unlicensed money transmitter, points to weaknesses in the government's case, and the proceedings' significant implications for the criminal liability of software developers, and broadly for privacy and freedom of speech protections under the U.S. Constitution. While Federal prosecutors claim Keonne and Hill “knowingly facilitated the laundering of over $100 million of criminal proceeds,”charging documents do not claim that the pair actively collaborated with known criminal parties.

Rather, as in the related ongoing trial of Tornado Cash co-creator Roman Storm, the government’s case seems to hinge on equating the creation of open-access software with the active provision of criminal services. Civil liberty groups including the DeFi Education Fund have warned that prosecuting software developers for how their software is used will create a “chilling effect” on technical innovation, parallel to the harmful effects of government censorship on democratic speech.

More broadly, the Samourai prosecution and related cases raise questions about the extent of Constitutional protections of individual privacy. The Cato Institute and other groups have argued that making these services liable for their use by bad actors amounts to an attack on financial privacy.

Some factors may work against Hill and Rodriguez in the context of a jury trial. Prosecutors claim that Samourai collected $4.5 million in fees for its services, alleged to be a form of control that could possibly negate a network access defense by the creators. Twitter and private message records presented by the government in charging documents indicated that Hill and Rodriguez were aware of the appeal of their service to grey and black-market actors, which could sway a jury against the co-founders. Samourai also ran its own coinjoin server, located in Iceland, as part of facilitating its mixing services.

The trial has moved with glacial slowness since the charging of Rodriguez and Hill nearly one year ago. Today’s hearing was the first since September of 2024, when Rodriguez’ motion to end his pretrial home release and grant him freedom of motion was denied by Judge Berman. Today’s hearing was originally scheduled for December of last year, but delayed with the consent of the defense.

The Samourai trial has run roughly in tandem with the trial of Roman Storm, one of the creators of Tornado Cash. Both cases involve hard questions about the legal treatment of software used to commit crimes. In both cases, government prosecutors have freely conflated the creation of open-access software with direct collaboration with money launderers, including the North Korean government.

Storm’s criminal trial has now been pushed to April of 2025, and will be covered in full by The Rage.

Another significant legal challenge to both prosecutions are the FinCEN rules governing money transmitting businesses, which define such services as those that take custody of customer funds. Both Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet were non-custodial services that let users retain control of their funds through the pseudonymization process. This is not possible with traditional financial tools – a clear case of existing regulation not fitting the way cryptocurrency works.

In November of last year, U.S. sanctions against the Tornado Cash mixing service were overturned by a court on the basis that they exceeded OFAC’s authority to sanction property. Alongside broader shifts in U.S. federal sentiment, including Donald Trump’s pardoning of Ross Ulbricht, they may represent a change in predominant government attitudes towards privacy – though few of the industry voices celebrating the Trump administration’s supposed pro-crypto stance have publicly pushed for the President’s intervention in these crucial cases.