Samourai

In brief

Feds last year shut down the Bitcoin mixing service, Samourai Wallet, with the developers arrested.
The defendants are now arguing that the case should be dismissed—and have backing from crypto advocacy groups.
A judge this week declined to admit amicus curiae briefs from the groups.

Two crypto advocacy groups, whose amicus curiae briefs on behalf of Samourai Wallet were denied this week by a federal judge, told Decrypt that along with other organizations, they urge the dismissal of the case against the Bitcoin mixer charged with operating as an illegal money transmitter.

The Blockchain Association, Coin Center, the DeFi Education Fund, and the Bitcoin Policy Institute argued in their respective briefs that Samourai Wallet has simply helped people execute financial transactions online without violating U.S. law.

“Privacy is normal: it’s normal for people to want to be able to make financial transactions on-chain whilst still maintaining privacy—people do that with cash every day in their regular lives,” DeFi Education Fund Chief Legal Officer and Executive Director Amanda Tuminelli told Decrypt.

Police in April 2024 arrested Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill and then shut down the website; the U.S. Department of Justice alleges that the app was an “unlicensed money transmitting business” used by criminals.

Samourai Wallet was a Bitcoin mixing service—a service allowing people to mask previous crypto transactions—that the feds shut down last year.

The nonprofits spoke with Decrypt about their briefs and why they feel the case is important for the industry.

The DeFi Education Fund, along with the Blockchain Association, argued that the money transmitting count was invalid because prosecuting software developers who don’t control user funds is outside the meaning of the statute.

In short: The defendants only wrote software, which other people used to transfer user funds—and never dealt with the money themselves.

The advocacy groups maintain that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, has determined that entities need “total independent control over the value” to be money transmitters.

“[The government’s] interpretation of the money-transmitting laws to cover non-custodial software tools generated widespread shock and alarm in the cryptocurrency world, which had long relied on the government’s clear and correct guidance saying the opposite,” the brief by the Blockchain Association and the DeFi Education Fund read.

Coin Center’s executive director Peter Van Valkenburgh also told Decrypt that the defendants operating a coinjoin server “did not rise to the level of control over user funds that justifies treatment as a money transmitter, including under FinCEN’s own 2019 guidance.”

Lawyers for Rodriquez and Lonergan Hill last week submitted paperwork saying that the case should be dismissed, arguing that users of the app always had control over their Bitcoin.

Coin mixing apps have made headlines since U.S. authorities banned Americans from using the Ethereum-based Tornado Cash in 2022, saying that criminals had used that platform to launder dirty money.

Feds then alleged that the app’s co-founders, Roman Storm and his colleague Roman Semenov, laundered more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds.

1/ Today @BlockchainAssn, along with @fund_defi, are sharing an amicus brief supporting the motion to dismiss Count II in the Samourai Wallet case. The government’s novel legal theory threatens to criminalize software developers who build tools that help people control their own… pic.twitter.com/QFZadJrXv4

— Marisa Tashman Coppel (@MTCoppel) June 6, 2025

Politicians frequently spoke about the case, and America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, bankrolled a lawsuit arguing that the sanctioning of Tornado Cash was unjust.

The United States Treasury in March said it had delisted Tornado Cash from its list of parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and in April, a federal court permanently barred the body from reimposing sanctions on it.

Edited by James Rubin

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Prosecutors in the case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm are attempting to to sidestep the possibility that a New York judge forces them to hand over additional evidence that could help Storm’s case.

In a Wednesday letter to the court, prosecutors pushed back against Storm’s lawyers’ assertions that they’d failed to meet their so-called Brady obligations — a constitutional requirement for prosecutors to turn over any potentially helpful evidence to the defense before trial.

At the heart of the debate is a recent production of evidence in another case in the Southern District of New York (SDNY): the legal pursuit of Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. Both cases involve a crypto mixing service that prosecutors allege was knowingly used to launder crime proceeds,

In the Samourai Wallet case, however, prosecutors recently admitted to having a conversation with two Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) officials in 2023 — before pressing charges — in which the government employees said they didn’t believe the mixing service would qualify as a money transmitting business under their guidelines and didn’t need a license to operate. Lawyers for Rodriguez and Hill accused prosecutors of suppressing critical evidence and violating their right to due process. Last week, the judge overseeing the case denied their motion for a hearing on the matter, telling them instead to include their concerns in their pre-trial motion due at the end of the month.

Though the cases are separate, lawyers for Roman Storm expressed concern that the prosecution’s failure to inform them of their communications with FinCEN regarding Samourai Wallet’s status as a money transmitting business also potentially constituted a Brady violation in Storm’s case.

In their Wednesday response, prosecutors said that the FinCEN conversation wasn’t evidence.t was an opinion, not a fact, they stated, and therefore not required to be turned over to the defense. Prosecutors also claimed that their discussion with FinCEN was irrelevant to Storm’s case, because it wasn’t specifically about Tornado Cash.

“Tornado Cash simply was not part of the conversation,” prosecutors wrote. “While Samourai Wallet and the Tornado Cash service may share some superficial similarities, they operated quite differently.”

Prosecutors said that they didn’t have similar conversations with FinCEN about Tornado Cash, claiming that there were “no such interactions comparable to those described in the Rodriguez Disclosures.”

“As the government has repeatedly explained to the defense in this case, the government has neither sought nor obtained an opinion from any employee at FinCEN — or any other government agency — regarding whether the Tornado Cash service is subject to registration obligations,” prosecutors wrote. “Such an opinion — especially an informal opinion offered by employees who expressly disclaim to be speaking for the agency — would not be legally admissible and would not constitute Brady material.”

The case against Storm is expected to begin on July 14 in New York.

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Crypto Advocacy Groups Urge Dismissal of Case Against Bitcoin Mixer Samourai

In brief

Daily Debrief Newsletter

FinCEN Opinion on Samourai Wallet ‘Irrelevant’ in Roman Storm Case