Roman storm, one Among the developers, the Tornado Cash tool was found to be guilty of a conspiracy aimed at conducting unlicensed money transferring the activities of the jury in the Recent York court. They face Maximum sentence Five years of federal prison.
In 2023, the US Department of Justice charged storm With three violations: a conspiracy aimed at committing money laundering, a conspiracy aimed at violating sanctions and a conspiracy aimed at running an unlicensed business transferring activities in the field of transferring money.
On Wednesday, at the end of the four -week process and the period of deliberations, lasting five days, the jury returned a partial verdict: it found a storm of conducting unlicensed money transferring activities, and not to avoid sanctions. It was not possible to achieve a unanimous judgment on the number of money laundering much more punishment Up to 20 years in prison.
“We are grateful that the jury has not convicted Roman for violating sanctions or money laundering. There are serious legal issues with the only remaining number, covering unlicensed money transmission,” says Brian Klein, partner of the Waymaker office, one of the representatives of Storm at the hearing. “We will not stop fighting for Roman and we expect it to be fully confirmed.”
Storm intends to release a single conviction in the application after the threshold, his lawyer says Wired.
Tornado Cash was developed in 2019 by Storm and two others, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov. The idea consisted in hiding the ownership of cryptographic coins by combining funds belonging to various parties, and then pulling them into modern portfolios, thus interrupting the public trace of transactions registered on blockchain.
Services such as Tornado Cash are sold as necessary to improve the level of privacy available to cryptocurrency owners. Privacy has long been an occupation among cryptocurrency ideologists, but this problem is now particularly significant, after a number of violent kidnappings focused on people known for having a gigantic amount of cryptocurrencies.
“Privacy is a very pragmatic thing for basic security,” said Vitalik Buterin, the co -exregational Ethereum Crypto Network before starting the trial. “If someone knows who has coins, someone knows who to aim for.”
But the US government noticed that Tornado earns differently-as a vehicle adapted for money laundering. When he brought allegations in 2023, he argued that Storm built and used a tool that allowed criminals to wash at least $ 1 billion in cryptography, among them hackers with connections with North Korea.
“Claiming that he offers Tornado cash services as a” privacy service “, the defendants in fact knew that criminals dealt with money laundering and evading sanctions,” said the indictment.
At the hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that they claimed that from the very beginning Cash was designed for money laundering. Their witnesses were a victim of fraud, which is said that the stolen funds went through Tornado Cash – although this account was questioned online By outstanding members of the cryptographic industry-a convicted cheater who used this service to wash poorly gained profits. “Wash, washed”, cheater apparently he wrote To your girlfriend, in a message about cash Tornado.