← Escape the Technocracy
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome everyone. This is Gabriel Custodiec and if you would like to support the show, you can go to escapethetechnocracy.com and check out the shop. I do also want to bring your attention though to another website on this particular episode and that is billandkeone.org and this is the website where you can learn more about my guest and learn how to support him. And yes, that means I am talking to Keone Rodriguez, co founder of Samurai Wallet, who was sentenced recently for running a piece of software. And we're going to talk to him. We have the privilege to talk to him a little bit. Previous guest of the show has been on here twice and it's been my pleasure over the last bit of time. Last 19 months, Keoni has been under house arrest. It's been my pleasure to know Keone. He's a hard working guy, he's honest, he's a true American. And he was living in the US is what came out during all this because he was following the law as he understood it and he was completely railroaded. You know, other people doing something if they thought it was naughty would have been off grid, they would have been out of the country. But he was in the US because he was following the law exactly as he understood it. So, Keone Rodriguez, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
- [01:12]
B
Thank you very much, Gabriel. Happy to be here and happy to be on the show again. This time for the first time using my real name.
- [01:21]
A
Exactly, exactly, yes. And you know there's a plenty that has transpired since the last time you have been here. Now, just to make people clear about Samurai Wallet, this was a piece of software. This was a non custodial bitcoin wallet, which means that you download the software, you have a seed phrase generated for you and therefore you are in control of your funds and you are in control of everything that you do on the app. So the people who run the software are not in control of your funds. Okay. So that they were convicted of conspiracy to running an unlicensed money transmitting business. It, I mean it's absurd on its face if you understand how this is architected. So that is how Samurai Wallet works. Now, Keone, I just want to ask you, why have you decided to talk? You've been sentenced, you have until December 19th is when you will go to prison. Why did you decide to talk, if I may ask?
- [02:18]
B
Sure, yeah. I mean for 18 or 19 months I haven't been able to say anything and that's been kind of difficult. Not because, you know, I enjoy hearing myself speak or enjoy making other people listen to me. But more so there's a lot of people speaking about me and speaking about Samurai Wallet and speaking about Bill, who was my co, founder of Samurai Wallet. And to have all of this stuff going around on social media and the like and not being able to, you know, say your piece or your side, it's pretty tough. And I think that was the prudent thing to do, right? There was a active court case going on and anything that you say will be noticed by your adversary in this case the U.S. government, and they will use what you say against you. They will take it out of context, they will spin it. So the best rule of thumb is just keep quiet. Now that I've been sentenced, I feel like it's safer for me to say my piece and say what I, what I have to say and hopefully people, you know, are interested in find it, you know, and informing. But I, I think now, you know, now's the time to do it because in, in, in a few weeks I'll be reporting to the Bureau of Prisons and I won't be, I won't have a voice again for the next five years.
- [03:51]
A
So, yes, you, you've been sentenced to five years. You have three years of supervised release and then you have this bizarre $250,000 fine as well. And there's some other things as well, very, very absurd. Now I want to ask you this like the beginner question, right? Because Samurai Wallet has been in existence for nearly a decade. You were following all legal guidelines. You were, I believe FinCEN was perfectly fine with what you were doing. I'm not aware that you were told to stop what you were doing. Why did you get rated in April of 2024? Like what, what's going on here? Just as kind of a beginner question.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah, it's, it's a good question. I still don't really know the answer to the question. As you said, and you said correctly, there was never any indication that we were running foul of the US legal system and had, you know, we received, or our lawyers received a letter from the U.S. attorney's office saying, hey, we think your client is breaking the law. Let's, let's talk about it. Which it does happen normally in white collar cases like, like ours. Normally the US Attorney's office will reach out to legal counsel and say, we think some crime is happening. Let's, let's talk about it and you can explain why you disagree. None of that happened. You know, it was, it was very sudden and on April 24, 40 or 50 armed to the teeth, FBI agents raided my house in, in Pennsylvania, and at the exact same time we're raiding Bill's house in Portugal. So there was no, no opportunity to talk. It was a straight escalation right from the get go.
- [05:50]
A
Right. And I, I hate to bring this stuff up, but it is, it can be useful to explain this as, as you say, now you have a voice. What was that raid like? Because 40 some people, for a guy who's just a developer who was following all legal guidelines, I mean, that is, that is clear ridiculousness. And those people should be ashamed of themselves for participating in that. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that raid was like.
- [06:16]
B
Yeah, sure. So it was around 5 in the morning of April 24, my dog started barking and he never barks. So it woke me up immediately. I was still quite groggy and trying to come to, you know, my senses. And I walked over to my window in my bedroom that overlooks one of the streets. And I live in a very rural, very small town. So I looked down and I didn't see anything immediately other than a, a bright light that appeared to be moving upwards. And again, I was quite groggy and not really able to comprehend what I was seeing. But as I, as I looked out of this window and this bright light was rising to my eye level and my, my bedroom's on the second floor, by the way, so it was, it was coming up quite, quite high. I know I, I understood it to be some sort of camera device on top of a, like a lifting crane sort of thing. And, and then I noticed it was attached to an armored vehicle and it looked like something you would have found in Afghanistan or Iraq. And at that point, once everything clicked in my head what was going on, the whole street lit up with red and blue flashing lights, and all I could see were just cars and, and trucks and, and police cars throughout the whole street. And immediately once they lit up the lights, then they got onto the megaphones and started, you know, saying, keon Rodriguez, this is the FBI. Come outside with your hands up now. And they just kept repeating that over and over. They kept repeating that over and over every five seconds. So, you know, at that point I understood, you know, that I was being, being raided. And I, I got dressed real quick, I went downstairs, I woke my wife up, went downstairs, and, you know, we, I obeyed the commands because there's really no point in, in not obeying them. You're totally outnumbered and And I was going to obey either way. So I opened the door. They had my wife come out first. She was standing outside. Then they had me come out, turn, turn away from them, put my hands up behind my head and walk outside backwards towards the sound of their voice, which I did. And I'm so I'm walking backwards, I'm facing my door, walking backwards. My wife is standing next to all door and there's four or five laser sights directly on her chest. So you know, the laser sights on their, their firearms pointed at her and pointed at me. From that point on it was pretty straightforward. You know, they, they put me in handcuffs. They asked me only a single question at that point, which was, you know, where do you have any firearms in the house? Which I answered, I didn't see any reason not to answer that question. I said yes. They said, where are they? I told them where they are and that was it in terms of questioning. They put me into the back of a local police cruiser where I sat there for a while waiting and I wasn't really able to see what was going on at that point inside my home or towards my home. Then they, they put my wife into handcuffs as well and brought her towards the police cruiser, but did not put her into the police cruiser. So at this point in my head I'm wondering, are they arresting her as well? And that was my primary concern at that point was if they were arresting my wife. They ended up not arresting her. She was only detained briefly and eventually they allowed her to leave the scene with, with our dog. And so she, you know, got into our car and went to her parents house who thankfully lived nearby. And it was only later that I learned that whilst I was sitting in the back of the police cruiser, they were sending a drone through the house to I guess clear it before sending people into the house. Again, quite over the top. You know, I'm a software developer with no history of any violence. I don't have a criminal record. There was, there was no intelligence to believe that there was a danger to federal agents in that, in the house. So yeah, I mean that was the, the raid portion of the event. They, they, they were there for probably four or five hours at the house conducting a search for electronics and notes and computers, anything like that. But I wasn't there for that.
- [11:38]
A
So for, for several years you're running a piece of privacy software that is valuable for all sorts of people. Great American company. If, if I might add, you're not told that anything's wrong with it and then they raid you with 40 plus FBI people, a tank, they have a drone going through your house and you're arrested. That, I mean, I think I can't imagine anybody listening at this point saying, at the very least, this is disproportionate. Right. Completely ridiculous. So, and by the way, people listening, billandkeone.org is the website. You'll learn more details there. And there's an opportunity to donate to him and his family as we will get to later, just for the people who want to act on that now. So what has it been like, keone, of around 19 months of house arrest?
- [12:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been tough. I mean, I try to keep a positive spin on things, right? Like I could have spent 19 months in jail awaiting, you know, trial and stuff like that. They didn't have to give me bail. The government argued not to give me bail. So the fact that I was able to spend 19 months on house arrest is a blessing. But it was tough, it was difficult. So there's, there's three types of house arrest, right? In, in the system, they don't use the word house arrest. That's kind of just a colloquial term. So the first type of house arrest, and the most restrictive is called home incarceration. And home incarceration means you cannot leave the four walls of the home. You, if you have a, if you have a yard or a garden, you can't go into that yard or garden. You cannot leave the four walls of the home at all for any reason. The second type of house arrest is called a home confinement. And again, you can't leave the four walls of the home except for four hours a week to do chores like shopping, you know, medical appointments, things of that nature. But you have to get prior approval from your probation officer, right? So, for example, I would say on, on Monday this week, I would say I need to go to Walmart Monday of next week, and I'm going to go for three hours. And they would either approve or deny that. Most often approve it. And then when you go to Walmart and come back, you, you send them a picture of your receipt to prove that you went to where you said you were going to go. And then the third and least restrictive is called curfew. And you are allowed out of the house to do whatever you need to do between certain hours. So when I first got arrested in Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh, the bail condition that was set upon me was home was home confinement and a cash surety bond of $25,000. And I was let home that night. Now, it's important for your listeners to understand that the U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh were not the people who wanted me. I just happened to live here. So they're the ones who got me that day, who actually wanted me. Was the Southern District of New York, a jurisdiction I haven't been to in like 10 years. And when I was last there, it was just as a visitor, not a business sort of thing. So I haven't been to New York prior to this for a decade. But I was charged and indicted out of the Southern District of New York. So while I was in Pittsburgh under arrest, the judge said, we're imposing these bail conditions on you. $25,000 and home confinement, and you are to report to the Southern District of New York in five days. So I went home that night after being arrested, and in five days time we went to the Southern District of New York. In the Southern District of New York, I again was put in front of a different judge and they modified my bail conditions and I went from home confinement, which is, you know, the second most restrictive, to home incarceration, which is the most restrictive. Cannot leave the house for any reason. I was then Instead of the $25,000 bond, they changed it to a million dollar bond. And because I didn't have a million dollars or 20% of a million dollars, to get a bondsman, I would have to secure that bond with property, my wife's property and my father's property, and then his 401k account, his pension account to secure that bond. So they made that change. So I went from 25,000 and home confinement to 1 million and home incarceration. And I was on that for quite a long time. And that was, that was pretty tough.
- [17:07]
A
Right.
- [17:07]
B
You just can't leave. You're stuck inside. You can't get any sun, you know, it's pretty difficult.
- [17:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine. I'm just reading here just a quick breeze of the Constitution, Sixth Amendment. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. That is ridiculous. This state that we're in right now, where somebody in a different part of your crime country can accuse you of something. That's where you have to go. There, there's, there's a lot of ridiculousness and it's worthwhile just ruminating on how far things have changed.
- [17:47]
B
Yeah. And. And the Southern District of New York is kind of famous for this, right? Like, they have been charging and indicting people where there's really spurious reason to.
- [17:59]
A
Right.
- [18:00]
B
They, they claim, well, because all the wires and all the infrastructure, Internet enter into New York. We have jurisdiction and there's a venue here, and sometimes that works and, and sometimes on appeal it doesn't. But they, they believe they are, you know, the preeminent U.S. attorney's office in the country, and they can do whatever they want. And, you know, they've been nicknamed the Sovereign District of New York, and they take that, you know, that nickname quite. They, they're quite proud of it, right? They, they, they're a, they're a sovereign entity unto themselves in their eyes. And, and that's what allows them to, to make these indictments and get away with these, these types of clearly unconstitutional actions.
- [18:52]
A
Right, Right. And that's one reason I want, I know you, you want to talk right now is to explain what's going on so people can make their own determinations about if this is the country that, you know, they want to live in. You were facing conspiracy charges, running an unlicensed money transmitter and money a lot conspiracy to money launder. Now you took a plea deal, so you, you pleaded guilty. I wonder if you could explain briefly, we've theorized, via Max Tannehill, that probably that is because you were facing obviously, a much lower amount of time in prison to plead guilty. And, and a lot of these court cases are. It's, you go in there, you think that they're, you know, determining justice, but it's, you know, there's all these variables that go in, like who's the judge, what is their reputation, what do they let you present, what do they not let you represent? What led to you deciding to plead guilty?
- [19:47]
B
So, I mean, it's, it's really tough for someone who hasn't gone toe to toe with the Department of Justice to truly understand how unjust the whole, the whole process is, right? You, you, you have this vision in your head that you go in front of a jury and you present your evidence, you present your case, and the truth will come out and the truth will win. And that almost never happens. You know, it's very rare for that to actually happen. And there's a lot of variables at play here. So you're, you're absolutely right in that. I think what really changed my mind towards the concept of taking a deal if one was offered was after we. So halfway through our case, we had a change of judge. We started with Judge Berman, who is A older, you know, judge in the Southern District. And we had a number of motions in front of Judge Berman, and some of them were really important motions. We had a motion to dismiss indictment in front of Judge Berman. We had a motion to sever trials between Bill and myself in front of Judge Burman. We had a brady violation motion where we found out that the government had hid exculpatory evidence from us in front of Judge Berman. And before he was set to rule on these motions and where we were to go in front of him and argue these motions, the judge changed, which is pretty unusual. It happens occasionally, but it's not something that's very common in the federal system. So our judge changed from Judge Berman to Judge Cote. And Judge Cote does have a reputation, a pretty, a pretty strong reputation for being a harsh sentencer. Will give you the max sentence, usually when she can. And if you go to trial instead of taking a deal, she will penalize you for going to trial. And it sounds weird and foreign, but it's actually quite common that judges don't give you any leniency if you decide to take your constitutional right to have a trial in front of your peers. So judge changed, which was a little concerning, but we still thought, well, you know, the evidence will speak for itself. And we have these motions that are really important to be heard. So we go up to New York for our first appearance in front of the new judge. And the whole point of this hearing was to argue our motions, especially the motion to dismiss. Well, we get there, she doesn't want to hear any argument on the motions. She says, I've read the motions, there's several on my docket. I'm going to deny those motions. Let's set up a schedule for trial. That was it. Now, we had spent months writing these motions, especially the motion to dismiss. And for a federal judge to not even allow us to argue our motions and have to answer as to what we've presented in terms of Supreme Court precedent and other case law, just to say no, no order written or verbal, and no argument from either side was a quite a wake up call to where I, you know, I told my wife, I said, there's not a chance in hell we're going to have a fair trial here. And at that point I decided, like, if a deal was presented that was a good deal, that I would seriously consider it, because otherwise you're going into a fight with both hands tied behind your back and it's, you know, you're going to lose that fight. And there's no point to losing a fight purposefully when the downside is 25 years in federal prison and a judge who will give you every year of those 25 years. The second major, you know, component to deciding to take a plea is simple economics. We hadn't even gotten to trial. We were probably about a, a little over a year in and I was already over a million dollars in debt to the law firm representing me. That's it. That's with the, the funds that the Peer to Peer foundation was able to raise. So at that point I was already a million in debt. We hadn't got to trial. Trial would have been very expensive. Expensive. And if we lost at trial, which was quite likely given the judge and the, what evidence we'd be allowed to present and not present, the cost of an appeal would have been very high. So, you know, I looked at all of those, those things and decided that when that deal was offered where the downside goes from 25 years to five years, it just made sense to me. And Bill and I were both in agreement on it.
- [25:13]
A
You have been transparent about your finances and I think it's important to understand this and also see the current state that you're in. Funds were seized. You mentioned the P2P fund that people were previously recommending people go. That's no longer the case. The new website is billandkeone.org what was the summary? Like, how much did this end up costing? How much are you in debt now? And like what, what, what's the financial hit here?
- [25:41]
B
Sure. So the, they weren't able to seize funds. Right. Because of our, of our operational security. They, they weren't able to access the bitcoin that Samurai had earned over the period of 10 years.
- [25:57]
A
Right.
- [25:57]
B
Or the bitcoin that I had personally, or that Bill had personally. But what they were able to do was basically impose a court order saying that neither of us are able to make any bitcoin transact or cryptocurrency transactions directly or indirectly. So that meant we couldn't pay for any lawyers with it. We couldn't, we couldn't do anything with it effectively. So the Peer to Peer Rights foundation was set up very, very quickly by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which I am know supremely thankful for, as a way to raise money from the community to help fund the defense of myself and Bill. And they al, they ultimately raised about a million dollars which was split evenly between Bill and myself. So that was helpful to some degree. However, you know, half a million dollars each when you're dealing it with a federal case in the Southern District of New York especially, doesn't go very far that may have covered drafting the motion to dismiss. Maybe. So besides that, at this point, I am personally in debt to the law firm representing me. A little over $2 million that needs to be paid, and I need to get onto a payment plan to make those. Those payments. As part of the plea deal, the government says we want the lifetime earnings of Samurai Wallet. So again, this was earnings over the. The period of almost 10 years, and that came out to $6.3 million. So once we signed the deal and they gave us permission, we were able to send them $6.3 million worth of Bitcoin. So that basically struck us down to. To zero in terms of our own personal holdings and company holdings of bitcoin. Then at sentencing, the judge imposed a $250,000 fine on myself, and then later on Bill, that would also need to be paid once we complete our term of imprisonment. I only recently found out that that $250,000 fine will also accrue interest if I do not pay it off the first month after it's been imposed. So every. Every month that I'm in prison, which will be 60 months, it will be accruing interest. So the amount that I owe will be quite higher than $250,000.
- [28:50]
A
That is completely unjust. I. I think anybody listening, I hope that they can very quickly recommend that or recognize that, and there will be, I think, on. You've been saying on billandkeone.org as you said, you're not allowed to take. You're not allowed to handle any crypto. So once you are in prison, the website could be updated so that there can be crypto donations, because those are just going to your wife anyway. So if there's people who are waiting to bitcoin whales or somebody you wants to wipe out his debts, that will be a possibility probably in. In, you know, a couple months here, a few months here. Maybe you could Talk about the BillAndKeOne.org Talk a Little bit about the. The fundraising there and where that goes to.
- [29:37]
B
Yeah, sure. So some very thoughtful supporters put Together Bill and Keone.org with my approval and Bill's approval. And what they were trying to do, I think, was, you know, succinctly explain the situation and give people a way to, you know, keep us a way to keep our voices alive once we're incarcerated, but also give a way for people to support our families. So my wife, Lauren and Bill's wife, Sabrina are going to be, I think, even more impacted than me or Bill during this period. And they wanted a way to, to support them. So we've set up a, currently a Give Send, Go campaign where you can donate to both of our families in the form of, you know, US Dollars using, using a credit card or a debit card. And that gets shared between Lauren and Sabrina. And like you, like you said, Gabriel, once both Bill and I are in custody and the government can't claim that we're violating our, our bail conditions of not handling crypto, then we'll put up a bitcoin address and Monero address probably that will go directly to Lauren and Sabrina. So it's, you know, it's, it's something I'm very appreciative of. It's hard, you know, to do all of this stuff yourself. You know, once you, once you get sentenced, it's like. It's like those scenes in movies where all the sound goes away and you're just kind of like, you know, spinning around and trying to get your bearings. That's kind of what it feels like. So for these people to come together really without much input and put together a site like billinkione.org, it's truly a, a, it's a miracle really. And it takes a load off and a stress off of our backs. So big thank you to those, those generous people who donated their time to building that website and putting the word out to help support Lauren and Sabrina.
- [31:56]
A
If you are sympathetic to what you've heard so far, I hope everybody will give that a check. Be bill and keoni.org send a few dollars their way or even more if you are feeling more sympathetic. And I'm sure that will be going for a long time. So definitely keep that in mind. Keep that consideration in mind. It's important, I think also to donate like that. And we're going to talk about the petition as well, to get a pardon, which I think people should sign. That's also on the website. We'll get into that a little bit later. But it's important to send a message and show that there are a lot of people who think that this is ridiculous and that this should not have been the case. And the best way that you can do that is to make your voice heard as an average person because this could have been you and this will be somebody else who is developing your favorite piece of software at some point in time. And one thing that you said, Keoni, is that anybody who's developing bitcoin software Financial software, Monero software, they're just as, you know, they, they're just as gettable for the same exact things that you were gettable for. What would you say to, or, or what are your thoughts on that?
- [33:06]
B
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. Anyone who's building, you know, anything that's, I would say, remotely useful and useful in the sense that it threatens the status quo or it threatens the, the state's desire to have, you know, total transparency into your finances. Should be quite worried about the, the, the events that went on with Samurai Wallet and myself. If you're making anything remotely useful and to those ends you will be a target and they will come after you and it doesn't matter where you are. Know Bill was in Portugal, hadn't been back to the United States in a long time, and they got him just as easily as they got me.
- [33:54]
A
Your servers were in yet other countries.
- [33:57]
B
And, and those were, servers were in Iceland. Yep, servers were in Iceland. Bill was in Portugal, I was here. It doesn't matter. Everything was seized, no problem. And unless, you know, unless you're in the, know, Libya or, or Lebanon, they'll, they can get you quite easily. So, and I think, you know, I, I, I personally, I don't think they're going to just go after all non custodial wallets, right? Because most non custodial wallets don't do anything that worries them. But if you're building privacy software for Bitcoin, you, you should be very worried and you should be taking steps to protect yourself. And I don't mean that like, oh, make sure you use a VPN and use Tor and whatever. Like that only works to a certain degree. I mean, get legal representation immediately.
- [34:57]
A
Right? And you know, maybe I'm old fashioned, but the fourth amendment of the Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Privacy is a fundamental American value. You are offering that to Bitcoin users to help them and protect them. There's always bad people who use any tool, right? Whether that tool is government or the court system or cash or whatever the case may be. We, I mean this is just a reality. We, we all know that some people will use, bad people will use tools. That doesn't mean you shut down the tool, doesn't mean you shut down the roads. It doesn't mean that when I look at a Toyota truck in sub Saharan Africa being used by a warlord that I'm going to hold Toyota responsible for that. I mean it's very absurd. The, the whole, the whole precedent here is Very absurd.
- [35:44]
B
That's right. And that was, that's the theory that the government put forward in this case. Right. It was then that's these were conspiracy charges, meaning had they actually charged money laundering versus conspiracy to money launder, they would have had to bring up who I laundered money for, the individual person or group that I laundered money for. And they weren't able to do that because I didn't do that. So they charged conspiracy. And their contention was that because I made the software at all and that this software could be used by criminals and I knew that it was possible to, that criminals could use this software. That was this, that was the object of the conspiracy. And so you said, quite rightfully so, that we know criminals use tools because we do, we're not idiots. But that knowledge alone is what the government charged as the object of the conspiracy in this case.
- [36:48]
A
Couple quick questions here that I think will be useful to. I'm trying to put myself in the, in the audience's shoes. The P2P fund that is no longer the place that people should be going to correct.
- [37:01]
B
Yeah. So I mean, I think it's worthwhile donating to the P2B Rights Fund if, if you, if you, you know, are into the mission that they, they set out to, to achieve. But if you're looking to support Bill and myself at this time, we don't need donations there anymore. That was purely for the legal fight at, at this point we need donations to our families. So Bill and Keoni.org and I should, I should actually spell it because not many people know how to spell Keoni. It's Bill and K e o n N e dot org.
- [37:40]
A
Yes, and we'll have links for all this in the show notes. Quick question, not that important Keoni, but just maybe a few seconds here for the curious audience. Oxt, the platform that you guys had, you know, supported that was a good way for users to trace Bitcoin funds for their, you know, their own benefit. What's the future of that? Is that done with. Could it have helped you in the last bit of time as well?
- [38:06]
B
Oh, yes, absolutely. It could have helped us. Had we continued to trial. One of the things that we would have needed to do is check the work that the government was proposing as provided by chain analysis and other chain analysis companies. And the best way we could have double checked their work to see, you know, where they're getting these numbers from is using a tool like oxt. Unfortunately, when our servers were seized, the servers for OXT were also taken down. Even though they had nothing to do with Samurai Wallet, they just happened to be at the same data center. So we lost access to oxt and I don't know if OXT would ever, will ever be coming back. I certainly hope it will. It was an incredible tool and really put power into just everyday average user's hands that they otherwise just don't have without a very expensive license to something like chainalysis. But so, you know, as it stands right now, OXT is gone, but I do hope in the future some, at some point it returns.
- [39:23]
A
One final thought here. It's important to realize that at the end of the day there is a single person in these cases who is determining your fate. What was your talk a little bit about your court experience, your experience at court?
- [39:37]
B
Well, you know, it was all very dispassionate from, from the start, I would say until, until sentencing. Sentencing was a whole different story. But from, from arraignment, which is where you, you know, initially plea guilty or not guilty all the way through all of the what are called pre trial conferences and pre trial motions and stuff like that. It was all very dispassionate and it's kind of a, it's a weird, it's a weird feeling, right? You're sitting there and you know that the person in front of you is trying to put you away for 25 years and everything is, is just like it would be at, at, you know, some business meeting. Right. And then once we had pled and then when went to sentencing, it was a very different atmosphere. The judge was, I, I can only speak for me because I wasn't at Bill's sentencing and he wasn't at mine. The judge was openly hostile to me in a way that I had not experienced yet. She, you know, she had brought up my libertarian leanings and ideologies as a negative thing. She.
- [41:05]
A
That's what this country was founded on. That doesn't.
- [41:07]
B
Correct, correct. You know, she was very unhappy with me because the letter that I wrote to the court, she felt didn't, you know, acknowledge all the harm that I had done and didn't acknowledge all. She really wanted me to acknowledge things that I hadn't pled guilty to, which I found very odd because why would I do that? So the, the atmosphere was very hostile and it was a big difference than any other, any other date before that. You know, so she, she gave me like, like we said, the max, max amount of time that she could give me. Five years. But I truly believe that if she was Able to. She would have put me away for as long as she possibly could. Whatever the max she could do, she would have done. That's. That's the kind of atmosphere that was in that room. So it was a miracle that I was able to walk out of that room without being remanded into custody immediately. And I'm thankful that I was able to come home that night and self surrender on December 19th.
- [42:28]
A
Right. But even the December 19th, it seems to have been selected to give you maybe not even enough time to do that. So you might have to spend time in regular jail.
- [42:38]
B
That's right. Yeah. So I. I don't want to get too in the weeds with how all this stuff works. But just briefly, normally, when you self surrender, when you're allowed to self surrender, what happens is the judge sends you back home and you. You go back onto your bail conditions that you've been on this whole time, and you await a letter from the Bureau of Prisons in Texas. And that letter can come between four to eight weeks it takes. It's a government agency. You know, things take time. And in that letter, it tells you where you are supposed to surrender to and at what date and time. That's. So normally the judge doesn't set a hard date on these things because it's a bureaucracy that she's not part of. In this case, she set a hard date of December 19th, which was about four. Four weeks, maybe five weeks from sentencing. And she said, if the Bureau of Prisons hasn't sent you that letter by December 19th, that I need to go to her and surrender to her in New York. And I will be held at the Metropolitan Detention center, the MDC in Brooklyn, which is a pretty notorious jail and really a bad place to be. You don't want to go to the mdc? I will be held there until the Bureau of Prisons figures out where they want to put me. So again, that was just yet another thing that she did to kind of, you know, turn the screws a little bit more. You know, she asked. She allowed me to sell Surrender, but is kind of a token because I'll be back in front of her on December 19th, and they'll put me into the MDC to await my fate.
- [44:31]
A
Just a call out to the bitcoiners out there. I know that you ruffled some feathers in the community, and I hope people appreciate that you did a whole lot of good along the way. And that doesn't matter anymore. I just want to read this. This is a stand that. Let me see if I can give them the credit. This was at bitfest and there was a stand and it was basically making the point that the 2015 Samurai wallet was the first mobile wallet to have Tor fully integrated QR scan to quick connect to your note, first mobile coin join, first to fully remove fiat from the wallet, first to label UTXOs, first stealth mode. And the list goes on and on and on. So Samurai Wallet was a huge contributor to bitcoin. It's in, in my view it was a big reason why bitcoin got the price that it got was because it was actually had some privacy features and therefore it could be used as a normal kind of money. So if you are a bitcoiner, I hope you will be sympathetic to what Keoni and Bill and their families are going through and you know, be, be prepared to, you know, give, give back because these are people in a vulnerable position and I hope that people in the bitcoin community will recognize this. Final thought here, Keone, you've been I'm sure reading some comments over the last 19 months and in the last few weeks as well. Some common misunderstandings that you see and anything you'd like to clear up?
- [45:55]
B
Yeah, I mean I think one of the most, most common that I see is, you know, if they hadn't have accepted fees for Whirlpool, then they wouldn't have been a target, that they wouldn't have been classified as a money service business or something like that. That is patently false. The government has already stated that revenue and fees have nothing to do with being a money service business and they would have gone after us even if we collected no fees. So that is just a total non starter. I also think that people should be quite careful when they're making these types of arguments saying about fees because what is the one industry in bitcoin where we do pay fees to an entity? It's obviously the bitcoin miners. We paid the bitcoin miners a fee to include our transactions into a block. And if we go down the government's line of thinking, a miner selecting trans transactions into a block is textbook money transmission and they collect a fee. So bitcoin miners hopefully are preparing for the inevitability of the government cracking down on them if they don't implement KYC and AML and OFAC sanctions, filtering, etc. So that will be coming down the line. And for people to make the point about fees is definitely the wrong way to go. The other thing I see a lot of is, is, oh well they, you know, they, they talked trash on Twitter and they invited criminals to use their software. I disagree. We absolutely did not invite criminals to use our software. We may have talked trash on Twitter and we may have made jokes like, welcome new Russian oligarch samurai wallet users. I don't see that as an invitation to crime. I see that as a shit post. And if you are, if you can't.
- [47:54]
A
Tell the difference, you shouldn't be on the Internet.
- [47:56]
B
Yeah, absolutely. That's. I couldn't have put it better myself. So. Yeah, so I've seen that a lot. And again, you shouldn't have to regulate, self regulate your speech. It's wholly unamerican. You should be able to say silly and outrageous and offensive things without it being a criminal offense. And I know a lot of Americans, especially around Thanksgiving, like to, you know, bag on what's going on in the United Kingdom where you can be arrested for social media posts. Well, I hate to break it to you, we're not far off here. We are not far off here in the United States.
- [48:36]
A
And with that, we will end this. The website is billandkione.org for you to please sign the petition. We didn't talk too much about that, but it is the ability of the US President to pardon Bill and Keone just like he pardoned Ross Ulbricht and others. The executive branch is a check on an unjust judicial system. So we're calling for people to sign that petition. You can give your initials and you can give an email address that at least gets to you. So I know some people don't want to give full information for that, but the whole point is that when people look at this, they see, oh, okay, this is at least a legitimate person who assigned this. That's my understanding, anyway. So please check out the website. There will be updates over the course of time. And with that, thank you, Keone, and we'll talk again soon, I'm sure.
- [49:28]
B
Thank you very much for having me. And I think the. My understanding is that once Bill and I are designated to a specific institution, that BillAndKione.org will be updated with how to write to. To us if you want to send us a letter. And, you know, I think both of us would be very pleased to receive your letters and we will most likely respond to them. So keep, Keep a lookout for that.
- [49:55]
A
Russian oligarchs welcome to send letters as well.
- [50:08]
B
Sam. It.