The Department of Justice revealed on Wednesday that the two creators of a cryptocurrency blending service, which allegedly obscured the origins of over $100 million in illicit proceeds, have been apprehended.

Samourai Wallet, in operation since 2015, was utilized for washing illegal funds while masquerading as a lawful privacy-centric platform, as per the DOJ. CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Lonergan Hill, the founders, developed functionalities explicitly intended to facilitate “criminals in conducting extensive money laundering and evading sanctions.”

Rodriguez is set to appear in a Pennsylvania court this week, while Hill, arrested in Portugal on Wednesday, awaits extradition. They face charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmission business.

Assisted by Icelandic authorities, Samourai’s domain and servers were confiscated, with a seizure warrant also issued for its mobile app on the Google Play Store.

Samourai provided various features aimed at obfuscating the source of bitcoin transactions, including a mixer named “Whirlpool” and a premium option called “Ricochet.” The latter enables a Samourai user to include unnecessary intermediate transactions (referred to as ‘hops’) when transferring cryptocurrency between addresses.

An elucidation of Whirlpool on Samourai’s website is referenced by the DOJ.

While Samourai purported to consist of a team of “privacy activists” committed to developing software shunned by Silicon Valley, regulators, and venture capitalists, prosecutors assert that the company actively courted criminals and sanctions violators.

In response to a post concerning sanctions on Russians, the company tweeted in June 2022, “Welcome new Russian oligarch Samourai Wallet users.”

Marketing materials highlighted in the indictment allegedly demonstrate the company’s promotion of its services to individuals seeking anonymity for criminal purposes.

Prosecutors claim that besides mixing funds from the Silk Road and Hydra dark web markets, Samourai aided in concealing the identities of cybercriminals involved in lucrative hacks, such as a web server breach in 2022 yielding 151 bitcoin, a spearphishing scam in 2021 and 2022 targeting a cloud service provider, and a 1,343 bitcoin phishing attack on a decentralized finance protocol spanning from 2021 to 2023.

Law enforcement efforts have increasingly focused on dismantling the infrastructure supporting the cybercrime ecosystem. Notably, a Russian-Swedish national was convicted for aiding criminals in money laundering through the Bitcoin Fog mixer, and one of the founders of the infamous Tornado Cash mixer was apprehended and awaits trial.

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