That's a great idea! I'd be totally up for prosecuting anyone running a Ethereum node used for laundering money too. At this point they really have no excuse; they know what they're doing is illegal, and are still continuing to execute the smart contracts.

> So why is the guy who quite brilliantly conceived and executed this idea being punished like this?

I mean, you say it yourself. They're the ones who actually executed on the idea. They didn't write a paper on this being theoretically possible. They wrote the code. They deployed the code. They marketed it. They continued operating the system for years, and profited monetarily from it.

That there are other people who are also culpable for other things related to the mixers doesn't remove the culpability of the original creators.

And again: if you implement a system that's doing something illegal, and by design you make it impossible to turn that system off, that's not a defense.