Rodriguez and his fellow developer William Lonergan Hill were accused of running an unlicensed money-transmitting business — a fancy way of saying the feds didn’t like their privacy tools. Both struck a plea deal on that single charge, cutting out the heavier conspiracy-to-launder-money rap that could’ve landed them two decades in prison. On Thursday, Judge Denise Cote handed Rodriguez the full five years, while Hill’s day in court comes on Friday.

Prosecutors pushed for the max, painting the duo as architects of a tool that helped bad actors shuffle dirty funds under the guise of privacy — and the judge decided to play along with that narrative. To many, Rodriguez’s sentence highlights how the fight for financial privacy is being treated like a criminal act. Privacy proponents stress that building tools that protect user anonymity shouldn’t land developers in prison—it should spark a debate about freedom, not fear.

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