"US Takes Down Illegal Cryptocurrency Mixing Service Samourai Wallet"

The US government has recently taken down Samourai Wallet, a cryptocurrency mixing service that executed over $2bn in unlawful transactions and laundered over $100m in criminal proceeds. The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced that Samourai's web servers and domain were seized following a law enforcement operation in collaboration with Iceland's authorities. Additionally, the illegal cryptocurrency service's Android app has been removed from the Google Play Store in the US. Alongside the takedown, the DoJ also revealed that Samourai's co-founders, CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Lonergan Hill, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Samourai Wallet was a mobile-first cryptocurrency mixing service combining multiple features to execute anonymous financial transactions. The application, operational since 2015, has been downloaded over 100,000 times. According to the DoJ, after users downloaded Samourai, they could store their private keys for any Bitcoin addresses they controlled inside the Samourai program. Samourai features included "Whirlpool," a cryptocurrency mixing service that coordinated batches of cryptocurrency exchanges between groups of Samourai users to prevent tracing of criminal proceeds by law enforcement on the blockchain, and "Ricochet," which allowed a Samourai user to build in additional and unnecessary intermediate transactions when sending cryptocurrency from one address to another address.

Infosecurity Magazine reports: "US Takes Down Illegal Cryptocurrency Mixing Service Samourai Wallet"