The US government has agreed to bail William Lonergan Hill, co-founder and technical director of the anonymous bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet, also known as TDev.
According to the documents, Hill's first hearing "after his undisputed extradition from Portugal" will be held on July 9 or 10 in the court of the Southern District of New York.
The letter says that the prosecutor's office and the developer's lawyers have agreed on most of the bail conditions. Hill asks to be released to his home in Lisbon before the trial begins, but the government opposes.
The lawyers ruled out the risk of Hill's escape because "the extremely reliable agreed bail amount would have left his loved ones homeless if he had not appeared at court." At the same time, according to lawyers, the developer "does not face a guaranteed prison term" because of the "novelty and aggressiveness of the accusations."
Hill was released after depositing $2 million, of which $200,000 is in cash, and the remaining amount is in the form of his family home in New York.
According to lawyers, the accusation caused "significant controversy" in the public, referring to an open letter from Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden, in which they criticized the "unprecedented and illegal interpretation of the law by the prosecutor's office."
"[FinCEN] has long made it clear that peer-to-peer applications like Samourai Wallet [...] are not considered money transfer services. The fact that Hill [...] offered the application openly for nine years indicates that [the government], like the senators, also considered it legitimate," the defense said.
Pointing to Hill's innocence, the lawyers stressed that even Google did not consider the Samurai Wallet illegal. According to them, in May 2015, the corporation allowed the placement of the wallet application for Android smartphones on its marketplace.
The defense also compared the developer's "aggressive harassment" to "claims against Apple for cybercrimes committed through a MacBook."
In April, Federal Prosecutors accused Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and Hill of facilitating the laundering of $100 million for cybercriminals and sub-sanctioned individuals.
According to the authorities, since 2015, the wallet has processed anonymous transactions worth $2 billion.
Recall that Rodriguez has already been released on bail of $ 1 million, pleading not guilty to running an unlicensed payment business and laundering criminal proceeds.
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