Samourai Wallet co-founder faces prison transfer amid treatment program shutdown

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Samourai co-founder prison transfer

Highlights

Samourai Wallet co-founder Rodriguez and about 70 inmates at FCI McKean face transfer due to the shutdown of a federal treatment program.
Rodriguez is serving a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, transmitting over $237 million in criminal proceeds.
The Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15, maintaining legal uncertainty for software developers regarding money-transmission requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act.

Treatment program closure triggers new move

As first reported by Cointelegraph, Rodriguez said on X on Wednesday that the warden at FCI McKean told participants they would be transferred to prisons where treatment remains available. He said the closure of the program means he and about 70 other inmates now face another relocation through the federal system.

Rodriguez is serving a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The U.S. Justice Department said Rodriguez and Samourai Wallet co-founder William Lonergan Hill transmitted more than $237 million in criminal proceeds through the service.

In a letter published by The Rage, Rodriguez described his earlier transfer from FPC Morgantown to McKean as the worst 30 days of his life. He said officials denied his request to make the roughly four-hour trip on his own, despite the short distance involved.

Transfer conditions and policy backdrop

Rodriguez said inmates leaving Morgantown were placed in ankle shackles and handcuffs attached to waist chains before being taken by bus to an airport and flown to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. He wrote that he was then held with prisoners from different security classifications and spent most of his time locked in a cell.

He also said he was eventually assigned to a cell with an inmate serving a murder sentence and was given only part of a foam mattress, leaving part of his body on a metal bunk overnight. In his account, the transfer process turned a four-hour drive into a 30-day journey.

The case is unfolding as lawmakers debate protections for software developers who do not control user funds. The latest Senate CLARITY Act draft keeps Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provisions aimed at shielding non-controlling developers from some money-transmission requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, but the Senate fails to advance the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15 after a procedural vote falls short of the 60 votes needed.

Our earlier article covered TypeSafe AI’s launch of Jev, a specialized AI model aimed at software developers that focuses on narrow classification and decision tasks at a much lower cost than general-purpose LLMs. We noted that the company touted prices around 4.2 cents per million tokens and rapid early adoption, helping fuel investor interest and raising questions about whether cheaper, task-specific tools could reshape the economics of frontier AI.

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