Tornado Cash Co-Founder to face trial

A US Federal Court has determined that Roman Storm, Tornado Cash’s co-founder, and other top management will have to face trial as their suit dismissal request was denied.

The Ethereum-based crypto mixer’s inventor is accused of  laundering over $1 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Roman Storm charges are punishable for a maximum period of 20 years, and these are a few charges not insulated under the First Amendment. The term tornado cash mixer usually refers to an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency mixer.

Storm’s attorneys argued that the Tornado Cash co-founder’s involvement in the crypto mixer and the money taken through was limited to its development, which is a First Amendment activity, and that he is fully prepared to face the charges brought by the US DOJ against him. Still,

Despite Storn’s application for the drop off of the criminal charges has been denied by Southern District of New York (SDNY) District Judge Katherine Polk Failla who reasoned that the reason provided had nothing substantive to offer to overturn the case instituted by the justice department.

The legal matter in question is based on an indictment from August 2023, which claims Tornado Cash carried out $1 billion in money laundering activities, including hundreds of millions of dollars used to fund the Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking group in North Korea.

The organization is well-known for carrying out widespread assaults on the digital asset market, using the stolen cryptocurrencies to finance North Korea’s ballistic missile development.

Storm is accused of conspiring with fellow Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov to run an unauthorized money-transmitting enterprise.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated, “Storm and Semenov knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes, while publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service.”