Samourai Wallet co-founder faces second prison transfer
Keonne Rodriguez says he and 70 other inmates will be moved after the drug treatment programme at FCI McKean was deactivated, following a first transfer that took 30 days.
Key points
- Keonne Rodriguez said on X that McKean's warden told participants he and 70 others would be moved to facilities where treatment is still available.
- He entered the programme because completing it could cut up to a year from his sentence.
- Rodriguez is serving five years after pleading guilty to conspiring to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
- The Justice Department said he and William Lonergan Hill transmitted more than $237 million in criminal proceeds.
- He described his earlier move from FPC Morgantown to McKean as the worst 30 days of his life, after his request to travel himself was denied.
Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez faces another prison transfer after the drug treatment programme at FCI McKean was deactivated, he said on Wednesday. Writing on X, Rodriguez said the warden told programme participants that he and 70 others would be moved to facilities where treatment remains available. He had joined the programme because completing it could reduce his sentence by up to a year.
In a letter published by The Rage, Rodriguez described his earlier journey from FPC Morgantown to McKean as the worst 30 days of his life. He said his request to make the roughly four-hour trip himself was denied. The account gives a detailed picture of how federal inmate transfers work in practice, and of the conditions he says he faced along the way.
Rodriguez said inmates leaving Morgantown were placed in ankle shackles and handcuffs attached to waist chains. They were then taken by bus to an airport and flown to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, according to his account. At that facility, he said, he was held with prisoners from different security classifications and spent most of his time locked in a cell.
Another move ordered
Rodriguez wrote that at one point he wondered whether all the circles of hell were contained within the federal transfer facility. He said he was eventually assigned a cell with an inmate serving a murder sentence. He also said he was given only part of a foam mattress, leaving part of his body resting on a metal bunk overnight.
Rodriguez is serving a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The Justice Department said he and Samourai co-founder William Lonergan Hill transmitted more than $237 million in criminal proceeds through the service. The case has become a reference point in the wider debate over how US law treats crypto software developers.
That debate ran alongside congressional efforts to shield developers who do not control users' assets from being treated as financial intermediaries. The latest Senate CLARITY Act draft kept Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provisions that protect non-controlling developers from certain money-transmission requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act. The Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15, when a procedural vote fell short of the 60 needed.
Thirty days in transit
The outcome leaves the position of developers uncertain, with the protections tied to legislation that has not moved forward. For Rodriguez, the immediate question is where he will serve the rest of his sentence and whether he can still complete a programme that could shorten it. CoinTelegraph reported his comments and the details of his earlier transfer.