Samourai Wallet Founders Receive Five- and Four-Year Prison Sentences
Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill were sentenced on November 6 and November 19 to five and four years in federal prison, closing a major sentencing stage in the closely watched Bitcoin privacy prosecution.
On November 6, 2025, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote sentenced Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez to five years in federal prison. Thirteen days later, on November 19, co-founder William Lonergan Hill received a four-year sentence. Both men had pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business in connection with Samourai, a Bitcoin wallet that incorporated privacy-enhancing transaction coordination and mixing features.
Federal prosecutors had alleged that Samourai facilitated billions of dollars in transactions and hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds. Those figures were government allegations; the established legal facts were the founders’ guilty pleas and the sentences imposed by the court. The case drew sustained attention because Samourai sat at the boundary between non-custodial Bitcoin software, coordinated privacy tools, and financial-services law.
The two November sentences gave developers and users a concrete example of how U.S. prosecutors were applying money-transmission law to a prominent Bitcoin privacy service. They also intensified a broader debate over where the law should draw the line between publishing software, coordinating transactions, providing privacy, and operating a regulated financial intermediary.
Rodriguez’s November 6 sentencing is used as the representative date for the sentencing sequence, while Hill’s November 19 sentence completes the same stage of the case.