Samourai Wallet Co-Founder Asks For Bitcoin Donations From Federal Prison

Keonne Rodriguez, serving a five-year sentence for operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, says he and his wife owe more than $2 million in legal fees and have exhausted all options.

Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez has published a public appeal from FPC Morgantown federal prison, asking Bitcoin holders to donate to a wallet address tied to his family’s mounting legal debt.

Rodriguez wrote on X that he and his wife Lauren owe more than $2 million in legal fees.

They also face a $250,000 court-imposed fine following his guilty plea to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

In a post on May 6, he was blunt about the situation: “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.”

Rodriguez said he is five months into a 60-month sentence at the West Virginia camp.

He surrendered to federal custody in December 2025, having previously been released on a $1 million bond before sentencing.

How It Got Here

Samourai Wallet launched in 2015 as a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet built around transaction privacy.

Its two flagship tools Whirlpool and Ricochet allowed users to mix transactions and add intermediary hops between sending and receiving addresses, making it substantially harder for monitoring entities to trace transfers.

From Whirlpool’s launch in 2019 and Ricochet’s in 2017, more than 80,000 Bitcoin valued at over $2 billion at contemporaneous exchange rates passed through the services.

Samourai collected fees estimated at over $6 million in revenue.

The U.S. Department of Justice arrested Rodriguez and co-founder William Lonergan Hill in April 2024.

They initially pleaded not guilty, but in July 2025 agreed to plead guilty to one charge of operating an illegal money transmitter.

Prosecutors alleged the platform processed over $100 million in criminal proceeds from dark web markets, cyber intrusions, and fraud schemes.

Rodriguez was sentenced on November 6, 2025 to 60 months in federal prison. In addition to the prison term, the court fined him $250,000. Hill received a four-year sentence.

The two also forfeited approximately $6.37 million in earned fees as part of a larger money judgment.

Pardon Hopes Have Faded

Hope for a presidential pardon briefly stirred during the Bitcoin 2026 conference.

President Trump had said in late 2025 he would consider a pardon, but Rodriguez now calls those prospects “very low.”

In a December 2025 interview with Bitcoin educator Natalie Brunell, Rodriguez said he pleaded guilty after crunching the numbers and concluding a conviction at trial was likely.

He has since written that “more builders in the space should be looking at what the government has done here, and really shoring up their defenses,” warning that other Bitcoin developers could be targeted next.

“I am simply a federal prisoner without money, power, or influence, and I will serve my full sentence,” he wrote in his May 6 appeal.

A Broader Debate Over Developer Liability

The case against Rodriguez and Hill, alongside the prosecution of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, has been closely watched by crypto advocates who argue developers should not be held responsible for how third parties use their software.

The Cato Institute argued the prosecution could have a chilling effect on “cryptocurrency defenders, human rights activists, privacy defenders, and software developers,” and noted it has already prompted Wasabi Wallet to block U.S. users.

The case continues to anchor debate over whether developers of non-custodial privacy software can face criminal liability for user activity.

The original Samourai code still circulates through the Ashigaru fork.