Developer and co-founder of crypto mixer Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, will now face a criminal trial after a US judge denied his request to dismiss the charges against him.
He faces three serious accusations: money laundering, violating sanctions, and running an unlicensed money transfer service.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla, presiding over the case, found the government’s arguments strong enough and ruled that the case should move forward on September 26.
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Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-based platform that allows users to anonymize their transactions. While it serves legitimate purposes, the platform has been misused by criminals to launder stolen assets. Because of that, it attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies, leading to the indictment of Storm and co-founder Roman Semenov in August 2023.
In his motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Storm claimed that Tornado Cash was a decentralized platform beyond his control, created with the intent to help legitimate users safeguard their financial privacy.
However, Judge Failla said she was not convinced by Storm’s argument that he was targeted “merely for writing code” and added:
If the jury ultimately accepts this narrative, then it will acquit. But there’s no basis for me to decide that as a matter of law.
She further pointed out that Tornado Cash had financial backing from investors, suggesting it was more than just an “altruistic venture.”
Jake Chervinsky, a legal expert from Variant, criticized the ruling on social media, calling it an attack on developers’ rights.
Storm’s trial is set to begin on December 2, and if found guilty, he could face up to 45 years in prison.
Another co-founder of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, was sentenced to five years and four months by a Dutch court for laundering $1.2 billion through the platform, though he is currently appealing the verdict. Meanwhile, Semenov remains on the run.
Gode is a Web3 Market Analyst who researches the most important industry events and interprets how they affect the wider Web3 space. Her formal education in media culture & digital rhetoric allows her to employ a methodical approach to evaluating critical Web3 news data, including large-scale events and the wider social sentiment within the ecosystem.Gode is a mutilingual professional, having studied in multiple universities all across Europe. This allows her to have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to analyze Web3 social sentiments spanning different cultures and languages and, in turn, develop a much deeper understanding of how the Web3 space is growing within different communities. With the rest of her team, Gode works to identify crucial crypto news patterns and provide unbiased and data-driven information.Gode’s passions include working and communicating with people, and when she’s not researching Web3 news, she spends her time traveling and watching true crime documentaries.
