NEW YORK — Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday for his role in creating a bitcoin mixing service that prosecutors say was used to launder $237 million in dirty money.
District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), who handed down Rodriguez’s sentence, said that she felt that imposing the maximum sentence for the crime he pleaded guilty to — conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business — was necessary for both individual and general deterrence, adding that she had a “troubling reaction” to Rodriguez’s letter to the court submitted ahead of his sentencing.
“The defendant engaged over a period of years in very serious, anti-social criminal behavior. I don’t understand his letter to reflect that he’s come to terms with that,” Cote said during a roughly hour-long hearing at the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan. “He identifies his motivation here as a desire to protect financial privacy. That’s fine, that’s good. We all want financial privacy. But I don’t think that’s really what was at stake here…There is no acknowledgement in that letter of the criminal world for whom digital currency is a gift.”
Prosecutors echoed Cote’s concerns during the hearing, saying that Rodriguez actively encouraged hackers, sanctions evaders and other criminals to use Samourai Wallet. He knew he was breaking the law, they said, because he had a six-page escape plan in his home detailing how he would use burner phones, cash motels and country roads to evade law enforcement.
“The letter directly reflects that the defendant has not come to terms with what he did,” prosecutors told Cote. In their sentencing memo submitted to the court on October 31, prosecutors urged Judge Cote to impose that maximum sentence, writing that the pair intentionally and knowingly laundered “proceeds from drug trafficking, darknet marketplaces, cyber-intrusions, frauds, murder-for-hire schemes, and a child pornography website” through Samourai Wallet.
In his own sentencing submission, Rodriguez’s lawyers suggested a sentence of one year and a day in prison. Rodriguez’s lead attorney, Arnold and Porter partner Michael Kim Krouse, told the court that Rodriguez, now 37, had co-founded Samourai Wallet as an idealistic young man in his mid-20s, after a lifetime of hearing family stories about how his relatives in Cuba had lost everything.
The fact that Rodriguez had voluntarily pleaded guilty, Krouse said, was evidence that he was taking responsibility for his actions. He also reminded the court that Rodriguez had already paid the $6.3 million forfeiture agreement ahead of his sentencing, something Krouse said was “unusual.”
When it was his turn to address the court, Rodriguez said that his letter “wasn’t perfect” but that he wanted to take the opportunity to speak to the court directly, without having his lawyers write it for him.
“I am truly sorry and I understand the seriousness of my crime. I am remorseful,” Rodriguez said. “I can say, truly, that I will never break the law again. This experience has been dreadful.”
Despite Rodriguez and his lawyer’s pleas for leniency, Cote was unmoved.
“The letter indicated to me that you were very much still operating in a world with moral blinders on,” she said, before handing down the sentence of 60 months.In addition to Rodriguez’s prison term, Cote imposed a three-year period of probation upon his release, as well as a $250,000 fine — despite his lawyer’s protestations that Rodriguez and his wife had “no money left” after paying the forfeiture. Cote ordered that, if Rodriguez were to work during his sentence via the UNICOR program, 50% of his monthly earnings would be taken and put towards paying off his fine. Upon his release, Cote ordered that 25% of Rodriguez’s gross monthly earnings would be garnished until his fine was paid.
Rodriguez and his fellow Samourai Wallet developer William Lonergan Hill were arrested last April and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Though the pair fought the case for more than a year, they struck a surprise deal with prosecutors in July, agreeing to plead guilty to the lesser unlicensed money transmitting conspiracy charge in exchange for the money laundering conspiracy charge — which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison — being dropped.
The pair’s change in plea came in the midst of fellow developer Roman Storm’s trial, also in the Southern District of New York. Like Rodriguez and Hill, Storm — one of the developers of Tornado Cash, a once-popular crypto privacy tool — was charged with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering, with an additional charge of conspiracy to violate international sanctions. A Manhattan jury found Storm guilty only on the unlicensed money transmitting charge, failing to reach a unanimous verdict on the other two charges. Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they plan to retry Storm on the two hung charges. Two of the prosecutors in Storm’s trial, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Rehn — one of the lead prosecutors in the trial against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried — were in the courtroom for Rodriguez’s sentencing.
Hill is scheduled to be sentenced by the same judge on November 19, after the judge postponed the hearing originally scheduled for Friday.
UPDATE (Nov. 6, 2025, 18:05 UTC): Adds additional detail, notes Hill’s hearing has been postponed.