Bitcoin & Privacy - @blockchain (2013-2016) - @samouraiwallet (2015-2024) - In prison for writing privacy software that worked too well. Managed by @leamuirleyn

FPC Morgantown
Joined April 2007
I am writing from FPC Morgantown prison in West Virginia. It has been about 5 months since I first surrendered myself in December, and I will be honest, the prospect of a Presidential pardon is very low. There was some hope during the Bitcoin 2026 conference, but that has now come and gone, and one must come to terms with the fact that I am simply a federal prisoner without money, power, or influence, and I will serve my full sentence. It will be years before I can even attempt to rebuild my life. Which is why I am now writing this appeal to you all now. Things are dire and we need your help. Lauren and I need your help desperately. More than ever before. We have over $2 Million of debt due to legal fees. We have a $250k fine the judge levied against us. Every day I get letters and calls from anxious lawyers looking to be paid. Or the DOJ demanding I start making payments on my fine. Perhaps it was denial or delusion, but I had hoped to do what I have always done and dig myself out of this hole myself - but with the reality of serving a full sentence that is not possible. I hate to ask for your help in this way but we are entirely out of options. We need to pay off these legal bills and other debts accrued attempting to defend myself. We desperately need your help. Now. For 10 years Bill and I built and published open source code and tools for Bitcoin users. Those same tools and code are what the government says were criminal. The tools and code still exist, they are out there right now and always will be. The creators however are locked away in Federal prison. The creators are the ones whose lives have been decimated. The creators are the ones who have been financially wiped out. The creators are the ones who desperately need you now. Please donate whatever you can to bc1qtjjcvn98wh7dfd55m8kxhjcfexanttwt8gtan8 . We have to get this albatross from around our neck. Samourai had well over 100,000 users. These users pushed over 2 billion dollars through our open source tools. We need those users and any bitcoiner who appreciates the work that we put into this industry for over a decade to help us now. Please donate whatever you can to bc1qtjjcvn98wh7dfd55m8kxhjcfexanttwt8gtan8 right now. If you require a private address please DM my wife @leamuirleyn and she will provide one. Please do not delay. Time is of the essence. Please help us. - Keonne
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Keonne Rodriguez retweeted
🚨NEW: NOTES FROM THE INSIDE Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez documents "the absolute worst 30 days of my life." By @keonne
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Hi everyone. I am sorry it has been so long since I last checked in with you. As most of you probably know, I was transferred to a new prison to participate in a program that would take a year off my sentence when completed. That journey should have been a simple 4 hour drive, but since I was denied a self transfer furlough the trip took 30 days, two cross country flights, three states, and cost the tax payer well over $10,000 before I finally arrived a couple hundred miles from where I started. It took me over a month to decompress after the nightmare that is the BOP transit system (you can read all about it in the next installment of Notes From The Inside) and just as I began to settle in here at FCI McKean we received some terrible news. Yesterday we were told by the Warden that the program I travelled all that way for had been "deactivated" and very soon I - along with 70 others in the program - would have to go through the transit system all over again to be sent somewhere where the program was still active. When I first arrived here other inmates warned me that things were rotten here at McKean. What is supposed to be a 9 month program averages 12-16 months here. One of the DTS officers who runs the program was suspended pending investigation and assigned to the mailroom, and many guys had missed their release dates and were forced to spend longer in prison. Why in the world did the BOP spend all that money transiting me and others to a program that was clearly dying on the vine?! So now the BOP is going to waste around $700,000 shipping all of us around the country. The ridiculous thing is they do not need to shut the program down at all. They have all the pieces in place to push the current participants through. The frontline staff (case managers, counsellors, DTS, etc) are largely empathetic and competent. The failure is one of institutional mismanagement and leadership. A lack of engagement with staff by Regional and institutional leadership has hamstrung staff and inmate alike. Recognizing those institutional failures would require government workers take accountability or be held accountable. Never going to happen! Instead, the taxpayer will be on the hook financially, we'll be shipped out like cattle, and the yokels who couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery will keep their jobs and find something else to screw up. @leamuirleyn has written to BOP leadership asking them to reconsider shutting the program down and instead send over a temporary leader who can shepherd the current participants through the program. This would save the Bureau and the taxpayer significantly. It is a longshot but one has to try. So that is the latest update. I have no idea when or where I am going to be shipped. Thank you everyone for your letters, books, prayers, and continued support. It means a lot. Until we speak again... Keonne @realDonaldTrump @OfficialFBOP @BOPDirector @BOPDepDirector @JusticeOIG @MarshallProj @PrisonPolicy
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Hello all, On Friday I got news that I am to be transferred to a new institution. I will no longer be an inmate at FPC Morgantown. I am a little disappointed because this is a nice place (for a prison) and my wife can visit easily. For security reasons they do not tell you where you are going but I am hopeful that it won't be too far from home. I was told to be ready to "pack out" on Monday or Tuesday - it is very likely I will be leaving on Wednesday - so I spent the weekend getting ready to leave. It is amazing how much stuff you accrue in such a short period of time, it has been nearly 6 months since I arrived here. I expect they will call me down to "R&D" (receiving and discharge) where they will inspect my belongings to make sure there is no contraband and I am not taking anything unauthorized and pack them away in a box or two that they will ship to my new institution. As for "shipping" me, it is very likely that I will be flown out to the central transit prison hub in Oklahoma before I am then flown onward to wherever they are putting me. Yes, Con-air is a real thing. Needless to say going through transit (Oklahoma) is a real nightmare. You can be stuck there from 1 day to several weeks, you're around all kinds of prisoners of all different security levels. No one looks forward to Oklahoma - myself included. There is the slightest possibility of avoiding the transit nightmare. On Friday after I got word I submitted a formal request (a "cop out" in BOP lingo) to the CMC (case manager coordinator) here at the institution. I requested that they allow me to perform what is called a 'transfer furlough' which means instead of the BOP spending upwards of $10,000 to fly me across the country several times my wife can come pick me up and drop me off at my new location at my own cost. Transfer furloughs are rare of course, but the CMC didn't reject it outright, he promised to take it up the chain of command and let me know. So while I am not expecting it, there is the slightest glimmer of possibility that they allow it. Considering that I have had no incident reports, that i self surrendered, that I had no issue on pre-trial supervision for nearly 2 years, etc, all makes a compelling case that I can be trusted to self transfer. So here is to hoping for the best. I will let you know where I will be once I know where I will be. All the best, Keonne
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Update: The request for furlough has been denied.
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To really thrive in prison you have to abandon all hope and be all accepting of your situation.
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I hope I am never that third man, I hope I am forever a tourist here among the natives, the unbroken wild horse, the salmon swimming up stream. Perhaps even the magicians tiger that faithfully performs at the direction of the magician until one day he decides he is a tiger and not a cat, and tears the magicians throat out live on stage. Acceptance and hopelessness, two cousins I hope I never meet.
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I hope the new year is treating you all well. In here the new year feels the same as the old year, in fact every day feels the same as the last. Anyway, it has been a while since we last spoke. Lauren has told me that many of you have enjoyed my Notes From the Inside. I have even been told that relatives of incarcerated people have found the letters helpful in understanding what their loved one is experiencing, especially understanding the workings of the 'Mack Economy'. I understand that the third letter has been published and the fourth letter is with @theragetech to be published any day now. Thank you all for the support you are showing. Please keep sharing the letters, it really helps. I would also like to thank everyone who has been sending me letters. I am responding to each one as quickly as I can, within the limitations of stamps and envelopes. Speaking of which, several letters have been refused and returned to sender because they contained self addressed stamped envelopes. Unfortunately you are not permitted to send me stamps, the CO's will refuse the letter and return it to you. I would like to thank @LawrenceLepard for sending me several engaging books that I have been working through. I am currently reading the biography of Teddy Roosevelt and enjoying it greatly. Thank you to Michael Miller who sent me a copy of his book, Doom Loop. I look forward to reading it soon. Thank you to my dear friend @SybilBartel for also sending some reading material, I look forward to getting into soon. Thank you to Shane from @LUAPublications for sending a whole library of the books they publish. I have received many other books but have no idea who they were sent from. If you send via Amazon, please do include a gift message as I do receive those, otherwise I have no idea who sent them. Finally I would like to thank J Masters who gifted me a subscription to @EpochTimes newspaper. This has been a welcome surprise and I look forward to receiving the next issue. I share it with several other prisoners once I am done with it, it has been a hit. Lastly, I would like to thank all of you who have shown me and Bill support. Please follow my wife @leamuirleyn for continued updates on our quest to convince the president @realdonaldtrump to right an unjust wrong and grant a pardon for me and Bill. "For there is no truth in their mouth; Their heart is vain; Their throat is an open grave; They deal deceptively with their tongues. Let them fall by their false accusations;" Psalm 5:10-11
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I would like to say thank you to those that have been sending me letters. I think I have received around 8 so far, which is more than anyone else in my unit. I am working on responding to each one. Stamps are hard to get in here, they frequently sell out at the commissary, and they do not sell letter envelopes at all. I have been told that you need to ask a guard for an envelope. If I keep getting mail like I have this past week my constant requests for envelopes will surely annoy them! Perhaps I will have to turn to the shadow economy / grey market for my envelope needs (Just kidding Warden!) Speaking of the grey market... Did you read my second letter published on @theragetech therage.co/letter-2-keonne-r… ?Hopefully you enjoyed reading it as I enjoyed writing it. The next time I speak with you it will be the new year. Have a great New Year. Never stop pushing for #pardonsamourai for me and Bill. Until next time!
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I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has been sending their support to me while I am incarcerated at FPC Morgantown. If you have read my Day 1 Letter published by The Rage: therage.co/letter-1-keonne-r… you will know that due to a Friday surrender and the surrounding holiday period, I had no money, and had not been setup to email or use the telephones. When I finally got the codes and PIN number required to make a call and use the inmate email system I learnt that my money still had not cleared! It is bad not being able to communicate. It is even worse being able to communicate but not having the money to do so. Just as I was lamenting a small miracle occurred. Someone named "Lalli" had sent my commissary account $20.00! This timely contribution by an unknown random person really saved the day and probably my sanity. I was able to use that $20.00 to phone my wife Lauren ( @leamuirleyn ) and convert some into email credits. With a tether to the outside world established I started to feel like a normal person again. Thank you Lalli! I would also like to thank "Mitchell" who donated to my commissary account yesterday (12-26). Thank you very much. Let's keep the pressure turned on to pardon me and Bill. President Trump (@POTUS ) still can act to restore justice to an out of control SDNY whose line prosecutors openly defy his administration and continue Biden's War On Crypto. Thank you all! #pardonsamourai
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Tonight is the last time I will sleep in my own bed next to my loving wife. For the next 5 years I will be housed in a federal prison at taxpayer expense for a "crime" without a victim. Just one of many victims of lawfare perpetrated by a weaponized Biden DOJ where truth and justice were sidelined in favor of a political anti innovation agenda. Where evidence was hidden and suppressed because it didn't fit the story highly partisan line prosecutors needed to tell. Where Supreme Court precedence was ignored by activist judges. Tomorrow I will surrender to FPC Morgantown. I will no longer be Keonne Rodriguez inside that institution, instead I will be a number, 11404-511. But outside of those walls my name will be kept alive. My loving wife, my family, my friends, all of you who have supported #pardonsamourai will make sure of that. I know walking into that institution that the story doesn't end there. I maintain hope that President @realDonaldTrump is a fair man, a man of the people, who will see this prosecution for what it was: an anti innovation, anti american, attack on the rights and liberties of free people. I believe his team @AGPamBondi @EdMartinDOJ @DAGToddBlanche and others truly want to end the weaponization of the DOJ that the previous administration wielded so effectively. The framers of our Constitution gave the Executive the power to pardon for exactly this reason, to balance out and restore justice when no one else would. President Trump has proven he takes that power seriously. I believe he will continue to wield that power for good and pardon me and Bill. Keep up the noise. Thank you all for your support. See you on the other side.
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Keonne Rodriguez retweeted
It’s so true, @econoalchemist has been so instrumental in getting the word out for nearly 2 years. He has daily been calling attention to this injustice since their arrests. Thank you! 🙏 #pardonsamourai
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This is the video I want everyone to see before the year ends. There is a war on privacy developers going on, and we need to fight back. Please watch it right to the end. odysee.com/@NaomiBrockwell:4… youtu.be/Fshsk8MCAf4
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Keonne Rodriguez retweeted
Replying to @BitcoinJunkies
should pardon @keonne & Bill from samourai then...
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