Replies (31)
They plead GUILTY.
And that address definitely is a feds honeypot.
But yeah people don't think twice and fall for this trap.
It’s heartbreaking and wrong.
They pled guilty to a devils bargain. You don’t beat the house, the only way to win is not to play.
When I was falsely charged with computer crimes for lawfully accessing a public API on a webserver, I received around $14,000 in community help to bridge the gap. I went to trial and went to prison, and then won on appeal and established precedent that helps everyone on the Internet. My reward for this was to be blacklisted from banks in exchanges within a couple months of my release in 2014, to be further impoverished (I’d already been bankrupted by 13 years of harassment by the federal government) and to be exiled from the country by continuous direct harassment from federal agents.
Keonne and Bill raised millions of dollars under the direct claim that everyone’s rights were under assault and they were going to fight at trial. They knew this was a lie at the time. They had no plan to fight at trial, and they just wanted a payout. They got more than any computer crimes defendant in history, for doing absolutely nothing for the community, *not even showing up*. In the meantime, Roman Sterlingov went to trial, received an absolutely monstrous sentence, and is actually fighting an appeal on a case that has a lot of hope for actually scoring points against the law (much more than Keonne and Bill). He got virtually no support.
I am generally sympathetic to prisoners, but Keonne and Bill rugpulled the whole community on the way out. They defrauded everybody. They received a gigantic multiple of what it takes to fight a federal criminal case and then *didn’t even spend it on legal defense*. In doing so they not only stole from everyone, but far more unforgivably, they soaked up the resources that were necessary to finance the cases that would actually decide the law. For this, Fuck Samourai. I don’t support their imprisonment, but they are liars, cheats, and cowards. There are other prisoners that deserve care and support more than them.
Wasn’t the crime conspiracy to operate a money transmitting business knowing the business transmitted crime proceeds?
Just donated. This is all our battle and has much bigger implications than Ross Ulbricht. Not fighting back and saving Keonne will set a very dark and lethal precedent for Bitcoin. It’s our time to show up.
Writing code should never be a crime. As an engineering student and aspiring developer, seeing builders like Keonne in this situation is heartbreaking but inspiring. We must protect open source. Stay strong! ✊⚡.
Are you saying a Fed stole his account and wrote this tweet? Your defeatist mindset wont help.
nooo a fed will not even dare to do such things...
LOL ignorance is a blisss
Nooo his wife would never confirm his account is compromised. She’s likely a CCP plant and her uncle invented spy cameras. Silly me for assuming you’d see the obvious without me providing remotely credible evidence 😂
I don't think sending btc will help. We need to start hitting the streets. But none of us can. We all busy mining fiat.
Unless we take the btc to support ourselves and go camp out in front of prison they housed in. And not leave till bill and keonna leave.
I do have some sympathy for them, but consider the following
1. Their product was openly marketing toward criminals.
2. They were antagonizing regulators, and almost daring authorities to test the legal boundaries around non-custodial privacy tools.
In short they fucked around and found out.
Lesson to all freedom developers - Be like Satoshi. Stay humble and unknown.
How much did Anglin raise for his legal defense? No refunds....
How for sure is this that this is how it went down? No chance they were simply strong armed into not defending themselves?
Soon, it'll be near impossible to stay humble and unknown.
Your point about lawfare chilling innovation hits close to home. Makes me think about how Iran weaponizes geography in the Hormuz Strait—they're essentially charging an ideological toll on global trade. Just another example of how systems get abused, whether legal or geographic.
The Board
Iran's $2M Hormuz Toll: An Ideological Chokepoint
Iran charges ships up to $2M for Hormuz passage while allies transit free. Analysis of the unprecedented ideological toll system reshaping maritime.
100%. If not defending themselves, nothing is spent on defense, and they can give back the millions of dollars that they raised.
Unfortunately, their case is still precedent setting.
No it isn't. You are lying, or repeating someone else’s lie. Precedent is done ON APPEAL, AFTER TRIAL. There is no precedent forged by any plea agreement ever. You are not contesting the law on a plea. Don’t shill lies for these fucking frauds. Go ask any lawyer.
Also case law that sets new precedent is almost always marked as such. Here’s an example, US v. Auernheimer, the case that I set to enforce Constitutional standards, available here on the EFF website:
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/11/weev.pdf
You can see in the top right corner of the cover page that it is clearly marked PRECEDENTIAL, so that people searching for new interpreations and standards within the law can discover it by search queries.
I appreciate the education and meant nothing by my statement other than good intentions.
Certainly didn't mean to insult. Thanks for the wisdom.
sorry to get aggressive. No personal insult taken, just passionate about the truth on this issue. It is really egregious. Sterlingov has been in prison for 5 years so far. He can’t make the case for himself, and didn’t get to bribe influencers to promote his rug pull
thank you for your service o/
Hmm, got ya. Even if they were strong armed into taking a deal they should have returned the donations. Makes sense.
Their methods were always scummy. For example charging "linking fees" for PayNym that were presented like they were an on-chain fee, but actually were developer fees, Ricochet (which was basically paying yourself) for an absurd fee, etc.
Their coordinator source code was a half-broken pile of scraps, and I had several suspicions there was ways for the coordinator to link the mixing UTXOs due to *implementation* flaws rather than the crypto. (great CTF example:
https://mystiz.hk/posts/2024/2024-06-24-google-ctf-1/)well, I'm not sure we should expect people who are accessories to money laundering to be moral paragons. I agree with your assessment, but I don’t know if Sterlingov is any better on that front. All of them were alleged to have extracted significant value from the obfuscation of the source and/or destination of funds. Samourai is absolutely scoundrels, and Sterlingov might be too! I care only for the advance of the jurisprudence to defend people’s rights. Sterlingov is appealing. His is the case that will decide the law. If Samourai had gone to trial and appealed, I would be cheerleading for them, even though they were scumbags.
When I'm in prison there will be nobody calling for me to be pardoned, and if I can make beg posts from prison I won't be begging you to pay lawyers. The lawyers can beg by themselves if they want to get paid for doing the right thing.
I find this post very sus.
This is the way 💯
