Samourai Wallet, feds ask for time to mull dropping crypto mixer case
2025-04-29T04:39:07Z
US federal prosecutors and the co-founders of the crypto mixer Samourai Wallet have asked a court for more time to consider potentially dismissing the case after the Justice Department rolled back its crypto enforcement.Lawyers for Samourai Wallet CEO Keonne …
US federal prosecutors and the co-founders of the crypto mixer Samourai Wallet have asked a court for more time to consider potentially dismissing the case after the Justice Department rolled back its crypto enforcement.
Lawyers for Samourai Wallet CEO Keonne Rodriguez and chief technology officer William Hill said in an April 28 letter to Manhattan federal judge Richard Berman that they jointly requested with the government “for a continuance of the pretrial motions schedule by 16 days.”
The Samourai executives’ lawyers said on April 10 that they wrote to Acting Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton to request the dismissal of the case after an April 7 memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche shuttered the Justice Department’s crypto team.
“On April 24, 2025, defense counsel met with the prosecutors and their supervisors in person at the U.S. Attorney’s Office to discuss this request,” the lawyers said.
“The Defendants believe that a continuance of the pretrial motions schedule is warranted to permit Defendants to avoid the significant expense of preparing their motions while the Government determines its position,” the letter stated.
It added that prosecutors agreed to adjourn “without expressing any views on the merits.”
Samourai Wallet’s Rodriguez and Hill were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in April 2024, to which they both pleaded not guilty.
Blanche’s memo said, “The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” and it would abandon enforcement and investigations besides those which “focus on prosecuting individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses.”
An excerpt of the letter to Judge Berman. Source: PACER
Currently, motions in the Samourai executives’ case are due May 13, responses are due on June 10, and replies on June 24. The letter proposes to put this back to May 29 for motions, June 26 for responses, and July 10 for replies.
The continuance would not affect the trial date, which is slated for early November.
Quashing crypto litigation list lengthens
The move is the latest in a long list of court actions to have prosecutors’ crypto cases quashed under the Trump administration’s favorable stance toward the industry.
Related: SEC says it won’t re-file fraud case against Hex’s Richard Heart
On April 9, SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony, who is charged with wire fraud and money laundering, cited Blanche’s directive in a bid to get his case dismissed.
Meanwhile, on April 28, the DeFi Education Fund petitioned the White House to drop charges against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm and requested immediate action to “discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
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