The co-founders of Samurai Wallet should plead guilty to accusations that, via their Bitcoin mixture service, they helped pirates and other cybercriminals to whiten more than $ 100 million in dirty money, according to Tuesday legal documents.
Keonne Rodriguez and William Longan Hill initially pleaded not guilty after being arrested and accused of a conspiracy chief in order to commit money laundering and a conspiracy to operate a money transmission company without license last April – accusations for which they face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Their trial was due to start in the Manhattan American district court for the South New York District (SDNY) in early November.
However, Tuesday, the judicial orders of the district judge Denise L. COTE, the judge supervising the case, indicate that the two men will change their guilty pleas during the consecutive court hearings in person on Wednesday.
The decision comes in the middle of the current trial of Roman Storm, the developer of Tornado Cash – another tool for mixing cryptography focused on privacy – which also takes place in the southern Manhattan district, before the district judge Katherine Polk Failla. Storm (as well as one of his colleagues, Roman Semenov, who remains in freedom) faces the same accusations as Rodriguez and Hill, with an additional accusation that he conspired to violate international sanctions. Storm, who maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty of the accusations, risks up to 45 years in prison if he was found guilty of the three counts. Storm’s defense laid his file on Tuesday, and closing arguments should be wrapped on Wednesday, leaving the jury to start his deliberations.
We do not know why Rodriguez and Hill decided to change their pleads in culprit. A Rodriguez lawyer did not respond to Coindesk’s comment by press time.
The pair has made several offers so that the arguments against them were launched. After the American assistant prosecutor Todd Blanche sent a service note to the staff of the Ministry of Justice (DOJ) informing him that the DoJ would no longer pursue criminal cases against cryptographic companies involving regulatory violations or “the acts of their end users”, the lawyers of Samurai Wallet Wallet asked the government to deposit their case – a prosecutor to decide on the decision of the future despite the fact of the Bchede.
Defense lawyers also tried to reject the case following revelations according to which prosecutors would have retained proof of the defense that lawyers for the financial crimes Network (Fincen) did not think that Samurai Wallet was qualified as a silver transmitter and would therefore not be required to register as such. Prosecutors have denied that their late disclosure violated the rights due to defendants, telling the court that “legal advice” are not elements of Brady.
Read more: Doj considering criminal charges against employees of Dragonfly Capital for the investments of Tornado Cash of Tornado
