Samourai Letter #7 Recounts a 30-Day Prison Transit Between Two Federal Facilities

Samourai letter describes a month-long prison transfer

Bitcoin Magazine published the seventh entry in its Samourai letter series on September 26, 2026. The piece, bylined to Bitcoin Magazine author Shinobi, is a first-person account written by someone in federal custody.

The letter describes a move between two US federal facilities that should have been a four-hour drive but became about 30 days of transit. The writer says most of June and part of July were spent travelling from FPC Morgantown to FCI McKean. FPC and FCI are different security levels of federal prison.

The published portion of the letter does not name the writer. The writer says the account will likely be published in two parts because of its length.

Key details the letter gives

• The writer spent most of June and part of July in transit between FPC Morgantown and FCI McKean, a facility he describes as a four-hour drive away.
• He says he was told on June 5 that he would be moved for a drug and alcohol treatment program. According to the letter, finishing the program takes about 9 to 10 months and gives a year off a sentence.
• He says he requested a transfer furlough on June 5 and was denied on June 8 with no explanation. A transfer furlough would have let him travel to the new facility at his own cost.
• He was called to Receiving and Discharge at 6:00 AM on June 10, along with five other inmates being transferred from Morgantown that day.
• The letter says inmates are usually flown through a prison transit hub in Oklahoma City, and that he had been told to expect one to two weeks of travel.

What the letter says the transfer process involved

The writer describes being stripped and searched, then given a set of clothing before being placed in a holding cell. Each transferring inmate was shackled at the ankles and cuffed at the wrists, with a chain around the waist, according to the letter. He says this limited arm movement and made walking short and painful.

The group was given a paper bag with bread, peanut butter and bologna, then put on a bus that the letter describes as a mix between a school bus and a coach. He says the bus already carried inmates from other prisons, ranging from people serving long sentences to people serving short ones. According to the letter, the driver and three armed officers sat at the front behind a metal grate.

The letter says the bus stopped twice in the first part of the trip, first while officers bought breakfast one at a time, and then while they bought cigarettes and energy drinks one at a time. He describes the journey as extremely loud, with every bump producing crashing metal, and says the shackles began digging into his ankles and his wrists cramped.

After about five hours, the letter says, the bus arrived at Greenbriar Valley Regional Airport, where other prison buses were parked off to the side of the runway. Officers from other buses called out names for about an hour, which the writer compares to a game of musical chairs. He says inmates were then taken off the bus and lined up in front of US Marshals next to a plain white airplane with a small American flag on the tail fin. The published text ends mid-sentence as a Marshal pats him down and directs him to wait.

The petition mentioned in the article

The Bitcoin Magazine article includes a link and a request for readers to sign a Change.org petition calling for pardons for Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill. The article says the petition is for the release of the two developers. The supplied text does not state whether the letter writer is either of those two people.

Claims that are not confirmed by the article

The letter says the writer had heard that transferring a prisoner through Oklahoma costs around $10,000. This figure is presented as something he was told by others, not as a confirmed cost. The supplied material does not include any official confirmation of that amount.

The letter also describes cellmates, including one serving time for murder, and says the writing was initially too raw to send and was set aside for a time before publication.

What is confirmed

Confirmed: Bitcoin Magazine published the article on September 26, 2026, under the title Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside, with a byline of Shinobi. The article includes a petition link regarding Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill.

Everything about the transfer itself comes from the writer's own account of his experience. It is a personal, first-person description of prison transit and not an official statement from a prison authority.

What is still unclear

The supplied article is an excerpt that stops in the middle of a sentence, so the rest of the trip and the arrival at FCI McKean are not covered. The letter says a second part is expected, but no date is given for it. The article does not state whether the transfer was completed as planned or whether the treatment program was later started.

Sources

• Bitcoin Magazine