Scammer takes over Samourai Wallet website despite FBI seizure

The domain of Samourai Wallet, a once famous Bitcoin wallet, has been taken over by scammers.

Scammers phish users with fake Samourai Wallet site

The news was shared by user @econoalchemist on X. “A scammer has taken control of the http://samouraiwallet[.]com domain. Do not be fooled into downloading malicious software,” warned the user.

He added, “How ironic that the FBI seizes control over the domain only for it to fall into the hands of actual criminals.”

According to Site24x7, the domain is currently active, and NameCheap is the registrar. The domain was last updated on Mar 3, 2026. It was first registered on Jan 24, 2015, and now it will expire within 307 days.

An archived page from August 5, 2025, shows that the domain was seized by the FBI. The page displayed a message saying “This Website Has Been Seized.”

However, a screenshot from March 22, 2026, shows that the domain is now active with Samourai Wallet’s branding, along with new content.

The new owner of the domain is unknown. Domain records show that the website is registered under a privacy protection service. This makes it difficult to identify the current owner.

X users have tagged NameCheap to take over the domain and disable the phishing site. “@namecheap pls fix. I sent a ticket. People are actively being scammed,” wrote one user. However, NameCheap has not responded yet or taken any action.

Samourai Wallet was a Bitcoin wallet focused on privacy and security. It used CoinJoin-based mixing and payment codes (PayNym) to improve user anonymity.

The wallet included Whirlpool, a CoinJoin implementation that mixes user coins to break transaction links. It also offered Ricochet, which adds multiple hops to transactions to make tracking highly difficult.

The wallet also included Dojo, a self-hosted backend that lets users control their own node and transaction data. It also supported PayNym, which generates reusable payment codes that create new addresses for each transaction without exposing wallet history.

In 2019, Samourai Wallet became fully open source. The Bitcoin privacy wallet was officially released in 2015 and operated up until 2024. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) then targeted the wallet over money laundering allegations, leading to the seizure of the domain in 2025.

The founders of Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, were accused of running an unlicensed money transmitting business. The DOJ further accused them of allowing over $2 billion in illegal transfers, including to dark web markets.

In November 2025, Hill received a four-year prison sentence, and Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years for the Bitcoin mixer.

Lauren Rodriguez, the wife of Keonne Rodriguez, joined the What Bitcoin Did podcast on YouTube a couple of days ago. She spoke about the FBI and IRS raid on their home in Pennsylvania.

She said, “On April 24th, 2024, our home was at 5 in the morning raided by the FBI and the IRS.” Ms. Rodriguez added that, “At the same time, Bill in Portugal, there was a coordinated raid on him and his wife’s house.”

She told the host, Danny Knowles, that they never received a notice of investigation from the FBI, and the raid was their first encounter with law enforcement.

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