Samourai Wallet says feds hid advice that crypto mixer was in the clear
Samourai Wallet’s lawyers allege federal prosecutors suppressed advice that the firm didn’t need a license before they charged executives at the crypto mixing service months later.
In a May 5 letter to a Manhattan federal court, lawyers for Samourai co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill said prosecutors disclosed that the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) representatives told them six months before they charged the pair “that under FinCEN’s guidance, the Samourai Wallet app would not qualify as a ‘Money Services Business’ requiring a FinCEN license.”
“Shockingly, six months later, the same prosecutors criminally charged Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill with operating just such a business without a FinCEN license,” the lawyers added.
The letter claimed that prosecutors were required to share their discussions with FinCEN over Samourai two weeks after they unsealed charges, making the deadline May 8 last year, but instead “suppressed this information for over a year, disclosing it only on April 1, 2025.”
Prosecutors charged Samourai CEO Rodriguez and its technology chief Hill with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and money laundering conspiracy in February 2024, unsealing the charges and arresting the pair in April that year.
Samourai’s mixing service took crypto from multiple users and blended it together to hide its origins. The government alleged the platform helped with over $2 billion in illegal transactions and facilitated over $100 million worth of money laundering transactions from online black markets and scammers.
Rodriguez and Hill both pleaded not guilty.
In the letter, their lawyers said prosecutors shared details of a call with Kevin O’Connor, chief of FinCEN’s Virtual Assets and Emerging Technology Section in the Enforcement and Compliance Division, and Policy Division staffer Lorena Valente.
According to an email from one of the prosecutors summarizing the call, FinCEN said that “because Samourai does not take ‘custody’ of the cryptocurrency by possessing the private keys to any addresses where the cryptocurrency is stored, that would strongly suggest that Samourai is NOT acting as an MSB [money services business].”
The email said O’Connor and Valente agreed that the government could try to argue that Samourai functionally controlled the crypto, “but that has never been addressed in the guidance, and so it could be a difficult argument” for prosecutors.
Samourai’s lawyers asked the court for a hearing “to determine the circumstances surrounding the Government’s late disclosure” and to administer a remedy.
Samourai to renew dismissal bid if case goes on
Rodriguez and Hill’s lawyers said that, using this latest information, they would again ask for the charges to be dismissed, arguing they lacked fair notice and “understood they were acting lawfully.”
Related: US Treasury’s OFAC can’t restore Tornado Cash sanctions, judge rules
Prosecutors and Samourai asked the court for more time on April 28 to consider potentially dismissing the case after the Justice Department rolled back its crypto enforcement.
Rodriguez and Hill bid to dismiss the case in early April, arguing it should be dropped as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an April 7 memo that the Justice Department wouldn’t prosecute crypto mixers for “unwitting violations of regulations.”
In the latest letter, their lawyers said if the government “were to resist the Blanche Memo’s directive and push forward,” then they would bid to dismiss as “if they were not money transmitters under FinCEN’s guidance, then they could not possibly be prosecuted for not having a license.”
Magazine: Tornado Cash 2.0 — The race to build safe and legal coin mixers
The US Nasdaq stock exchange is making SEC approval of its proposal to offer tokenized versions of stocks listed on the exchange a top priority, according to the exchange’s crypto chief.
“We’ll just move as fast as we can,” Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said during an interview with CNBC on Thursday, when asked whether the SEC could approve the proposal this year.
“I think what we have to really evaluate where the public comments come back in and then answer and respond to the SEC questions as they come through,” Savarese said. “We hope to kind of work with them as quickly as possible,” Savarese said.
Savarese says Nasdaq isn’t “upending the system”
The proposal, submitted by Nasdaq on Sept. 8, is requesting to allow investors to buy and sell stock tokens — digital representations of shares in publicly traded companies — on the exchange.
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is not trying to overhaul the way stocks are invested in when asked whether he expects other major exchanges to follow suit.
“We’re not looking at upending the system; we want everyone to come along for that ride and bring tokenization more into the mainstream,” he said.
“We want to do it in that responsible investor-led way first, under the SEC rules themselves,” he added.
It was only in October that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that tokenization will “eventually eat the whole financial system.”
The crypto industry is divided on tokenized equities
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is aiming to be an innovator in the ecosystem, noting that the exchange was the first to transition markets from paper-based trading to electronic systems.
Related: DATs bring crypto’s insider trading problem to TradFi: Shane Molidor
Tokenizing stocks has been one of the most significant talking points in the crypto industry this year.
On Sept. 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the company became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its equity on a major blockchain following its launch on the Solana network.
The conversation around tokenized equities has also drawn skepticism from the crypto industry.
On Oct. 1, Rob Hadick, general partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, told Cointelegraph that tokenized equities will be a significant benefit to traditional markets, but may not be a boon to the crypto industry as others have predicted.
Hadick said that if tokenized stocks use layer-2 networks, it creates “leakage” as value and may not flow back to Ethereum or the broader crypto ecosystem as much as hoped.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
Hester Peirce, a commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and head of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, reaffirmed the right to crypto self-custody and privacy in financial transactions.
“I’m a freedom maximalist,” Peirce told The Rollup podcast on Friday, while saying that self-custody of assets is a fundamental human right. She added:
“Why should I have to be forced to go through someone else to hold my assets? It baffles me that in this country, which is so premised on freedom, that would even be an issue — of course, people can hold their own assets.”
Peirce added that online financial privacy should be the standard. “It has become the presumption that if you want to keep your transactions private, you’re doing something wrong, but it should be exactly the opposite presumption,” she said.
The comments came as the Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity Act, a crypto market structure bill that includes provisions for self-custody, anti-money laundering(AML) regulations, and asset taxonomy, is delayed until 2026, according to Senator Tim Scott.
Related: SEC to hold privacy and financial surveillance roundtable in December
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) challenge Bitcoin’s self-custody ethos
Many large Bitcoin (BTC) whales and long-term holders are pivoting from self-custody to ETFs to reap the tax benefits and hassle-free management of owning crypto in an investment vehicle.
“We are witnessing the first decline in self-custodied Bitcoin in 15 years,” Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, the head of research at crypto exchange Uphold, said.
Hiesboeck attributed the shift to the SEC approving in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETFs in July, which allowed authorized holders to exchange crypto for ETF shares and vice versa without triggering a taxable event, unlike cash-settled ETFs.
“A move away from the self-custody mantra of ‘not your keys, not your coins’ is another nail in the coffin of the original crypto spirit,” Hiesboeck added.
In February, notable Bitcoin analyst and investor PlanB, the developer of the BTC stock-to-flow model, announced that he transferred his Bitcoin to ETFs to alleviate the “hassle” of private key management.
PlanB’s announcement caused an outcry in the Bitcoin community, as many voiced concerns that handing over custody to a third party clashed with Bitcoin’s core values.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
Jeremy Corbyn has declined to say his Your Party co-founder Zarah Sultana is a friend as supporters of the new grouping gather in Liverpool.
Speaking to Sky News on the eve of the conference, Mr Corbyn acknowledged “stresses and strains” in the set-up of the party but said it had become “a lot better in the last few days and weeks and we’re going to get through this weekend”.
The former Labour leader has publicly clashed with Ms Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, over the launch and structure of the new party.
Asked if they were friends, Mr Corbyn said they were “colleagues in parliament, and we obviously communicate and so on”.
The pair appeared at separate events on the eve of the party’s inaugural gathering.
Ms Sultana had previously claimed she was being “sidelined” by a “sexist boys’ club” within the fledgling party.
Mr Corbyn said her comments were an “unfortunate choice of words” but added that he had been more involved in the organisation of the conference than she had.
The co-founders have had a strained relationship since setting up the party. Pic: Your Party
The Islington North MP also said that Your Party was still waiting for Ms Sultana to transfer all of the funds she had raised from supporters.
“Obviously having money up front for a conference is a big help,” he said.
Ms Sultana has insisted she is transferring the donations in stages.
The weekend gathering in Liverpool will see supporters choose between four options for a permanent party name: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance, For the Many.
The preferred choice of Ms Sultana – The Left – did not make the ballot.
Similarly, the Coventry MP had said she favoured a co-leader approach, but members will only be able to pick between single leadership or collective leadership models.
Speaking at her own pre-conference rally, Ms Sultana blamed a “nameless, faceless bureaucrat” for restricting the choices.
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The meeting also risked being disrupted by a series of member expulsions. One of those ejected, Lewis Nielsen, accused a “clique” of trying to “take over”.
Your Party sources said expulsions related to members of the Socialist Workers Party and that holding another national party membership was not allowed.
Ms Sultana blamed a “culture of paranoia at the top” and said she believed the same people who had been briefing against her were now also expelling members.
Mr Corbyn will open the conference on Saturday, while the results of the main decision-making votes will be announced on Sunday.
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