Build Privacy Tools, Go to Prison, Samourai Developers Change Pleas
The code they wrote remains free, waiting for the next generation of developers smart enough to never attach their names to it.
The DOJ finally broke Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill after 461 days. The Samourai Wallet developers are changing their pleas to guilty today at 10:00 and 10:30 AM in Judge Denise Cote's courtroom at 500 Pearl Street. The state's message couldn't be clearer: build privacy tools, go to prison.
Rodriguez and Hill faced the full weight of federal prosecution for creating software that actually worked Samourai's Whirlpool CoinJoin implementation mixed over $100 million worth of Bitcoin, breaking chain analysis and preventing financial surveillance. The DOJ called it money laundering. Developers called it math.
In April 2024 federal agents grabbed everything: code repositories, user data, communication logs. Standard playbook when the state wants to map an entire ecosystem before moving on the next targets. The 461-day grind between arrest and plea tells you everything about their tactics financial exhaustion, family pressure, the promise of decades in federal prison versus whatever deal they're offering today.
The personal leverage prosecutors deployed is obvious family involvement, kids watching their parents face life-altering charges for writing code. Remember Ross Ulbricht's mother testifying, begging for mercy?
