Roman Storm, the developer of the Tornado Cash crypto mixer, will appear in court in July. According to a letter sent to the judge by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, Storm will be charged with several of the previously announced charges, and it was decided to cancel one.
Mixers anonymize cryptocurrency transactions by mixing them with others to hide the origin and purpose of the funds. They are used both to enhance privacy and for criminal purposes for money laundering.
Federal prosecutors will allege that Storm participated in a money laundering conspiracy, operated an unlicensed money transfer business, and failed to comply with U.S. sanctions. The trial is scheduled for July 14th.
"The government continues to judge Storm for intentionally conspiring to launder money, evade sanctions, and transport and transfer funds that he knew had been criminally obtained," a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman told Decrypt.
The agency also said it would drop charges against Storm of conspiring to conduct a money transfer business without a license.
According to Peter Van Valkenburgh, head of the non-profit human rights organization Coin Center, this charge by the Ministry of Justice contradicts the recommendations issued in 2019 by the Office for Combating Financial Crimes of the US Treasury (FinCEN).
Van Valkenburgh explained that FinCEN's recommendations state that "non-custodial organizations" such as Tornado Cash are not money transfer providers.
In 2022, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklisted Tornado Cash for facilitating the laundering of $7 billion in illegal income.
Later that year, mixer developer Alexey Pertsev was detained, and in May 2024 he was sentenced to five years and four months in prison on charges of laundering $1.2 billion through the service he created.
This was the first time that a software developer was convicted of using his code by third parties.
Two other Tornado Cash founders, Roman Semenov and Roman Storm, were also charged, the first in absentia, and the second was arrested in the summer of 2023. Later, Storm was released on bail of $ 2 million, he pleaded not guilty.
At the end of November 2024, a court in the United States declared sanctions against Tornado Cash illegal. The panel of judges ruled that OFAC exceeded its authority by sanctioning the cryptomixer's smart contracts.
In March of this year, the service was removed from the US Department of Justice's sanctions list. A month earlier, Pertsev was released from prison under house arrest and is now preparing to file an appeal.
