{"id":29405,"date":"2025-05-30T09:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T09:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=29405"},"modified":"2025-05-30T09:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T09:47:08","slug":"samourai-wallet-files-to-dismiss-doj-case-citing-fincen-guidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=29405","title":{"rendered":"Samourai Wallet Files to Dismiss DOJ Case, Citing FinCEN Guidance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The co-founders of Bitcoin privacy app Samourai Wallet pushed back against the U.S. government\u2019s criminal charges, arguing in a new court filing<\/a> that the Department of Justice\u2019s case should be thrown out because it breaks with years of Treasury Department policy and threatens to criminalize open-source software.<\/p>\n

Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, charged with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering, filed a joint motion asking a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the indictment.<\/p>\n

The pair’s lawyers say Samourai Wallet never handled user funds and shouldn\u2019t be considered a financial institution or a money transmitter under federal law.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the dispute is the distinction between custodial services, which take control of customer assets, and non-custodial tools like Samourai, which merely help users obscure blockchain transactions using a method called CoinJoin.<\/p>\n

According to the motion, Samourai users always retained control of their crypto, and the app simply coordinated privacy-enhancing transactions among them.<\/p>\n

The developers\u2019 defense cited longstanding guidance from the Treasury Department\u2019s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), that anonymizing software providers are not subject to money transmitter rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinCEN never maintained that it was a money transmitting business that must be licensed. To the contrary, FinCEN consistently advised that companies and software apps that did not \u201caccept\u201d or \u201ctransmit\u201d funds were not \u201cmoney transmitting\u201d businesses,\u201d the filing reads.<\/p>\n

The defense argues that the Department of Justice\u2019s charges mark a sharp and unprecedented break from that interpretation \u201cin an apparent regulatory power struggle with FinCEN.\u201d<\/p>\n

To them, the DOJ\u2019s conduct is akin to \u201ccharging a shovel manufacturer because it may know murderers use shovels to bury victims\u201d or \u201ccharging a burner phone manufacturer because it may know some customers use the phones to facilitate drug crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the motion, the lawyers warned that the DOJ\u2019s theory could implicate a wide range of developers building privacy tools.<\/p>\n

Several crypto advocacy groups, including Coin Center and the DeFi Education Fund, have signaled interest<\/a> in filing amicus briefs in support of the motion, warning that the case could chill innovation and infringe on civil liberties if allowed to proceed.<\/p>\n

The court is scheduled to hear arguments on July 22.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The co-founders of Bitcoin privacy app Samourai Wallet pushed back against the U.S. government\u2019s criminal charges, arguing in a new court filing that the Department of Justice\u2019s case should be thrown out because it breaks with years of Treasury Department policy and threatens to criminalize open-source software. Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, charged with operating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-29405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}