THE BUREAU OF PRISONS LISTS KEONNE RODRIGUEZ AT FCI MCKEAN UNTIL 22 DECEMBER 2029 AND WILLIAM HILL AT FCI OTISVILLE UNTIL 14 DECEMBER 2028 — THE FORFEITURE ORDER READS $237,832,360.55 AND WAS SATISFIED WITH $6,367,139.69 — THE GOVERNMENT ALSO HAS THEIR DREAD POSTS
The Bureau of Prisons runs a public inmate locator and it answers in about a minute. Keonne Rodriguez, register number 11404-511, age 38, FCI McKean, projected release 22 December 2029. William Lonergan Hill, register number 24289-511, age 68, FCI Otisville, projected release 14 December 2028. Judge Denise Cote sentenced them to five years and four years on 6 and 19 November 2025, with three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine each.
Now the two numbers from the same judgment, in the government’s own words. Rodriguez and Hill have paid a total of $6,367,139.69 in forfeiture, representing the fees Samourai earned, in satisfaction of an order to forfeit $237,832,360.55, the larger sum representing the total traceable criminal proceeds for which Samourai executed transactions. The order names thirty-seven times what the business ever collected. The court took the fees and called it satisfied. The big number is what they are punished for. The small number is what they got.
Read the other half too, because most of the coverage will not. The Justice Department’s own charging release says the private keys are not shared with Samourai employees. The same government also says Hill answered a Dread user asking how to clean dirty BTC by writing that Whirlpool is a much better option, that Rodriguez told the hackers of a social media platform to feed and send the proceeds into Whirlpool, and that Rodriguez described mixing in a WhatsApp message as money laundering for bitcoin. Those are the government’s quotes and they are not nothing.
Which is why this is a bad place to settle the question. Bitcoiners want a ruling that writing non-custodial software is not operating a money transmitter. The government wants the opposite. This case answers neither, because both men pleaded guilty and nobody ever had to separate the tool from the way it was sold. On 24 September three researchers published private bitcoin transfers that need no change to consensus. Nobody has to approve that, and there is no company to put on an indictment. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $84,086.