A federal judge in New York has sentenced William Lonergan Hill, co-founder and chief technology officer of Samourai Wallet, to four years in prison.
Judge Denise L. Cote delivered the sentence to Hill on November 19, along with three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The ruling comes two weeks after Hill’s business partner, Keonne Rodriguez, received a five-year sentence and a similar fine.
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Both Hill and Rodriguez pleaded guilty in July to conspiring to run an unlicensed money transmission business. In exchange, prosecutors dropped money-laundering charges.
Authorities said users of Samourai Wallet used its privacy features, “Whirlpool”, launched in 2019, and “Ricochet”, introduced in 2017, to hide Bitcoin transactions. According to prosecutors, over 80,000 Bitcoin
Investigators also said Hill promoted Samourai Wallet on the darknet forum Dread as a way to “clean dirty BTC”.
Hill’s lawyer argued that his client’s recent autism diagnosis affected his ability to make sound decisions. The attorney described his thinking as influenced by the belief that developing non-custodial tools would protect him from legal risk.
Judge Cote accepted that prison would be difficult for Hill but said that such actions still required deterrence. She reduced the sentence from the 60 months requested by prosecutors to 48 months.
Hill is expected to begin serving his sentence on January 2, 2026.
Recently, Travis Ford, an Oklahoma man, was sentenced to five years in prison for leading a cryptocurrency investment scam. How did the case unfold? Read the full story.
