Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Guilty on One Count in Federal Crypto Case

“By claiming to offer Tornado’s cash service as a” confidentiality service “, the accused knew that it was a paradise for criminals to engage in a large -scale money laundering and escape sanctions,” alleged the accusation.

At the trial, the prosecutors presented evidence that they said that the Tornado Cash were designed for money laundering from the start. Their witnesses included a victim of scam whose stolen funds would have crossed the tornado money – although this account was disputed online by eminent members of the cryptographic industry – and a condemned fraudster who used the service to whiten badly acquired gains. “Washy, Washy,” wrote the fraudster to his girlfriend, in a message on the Tornado Cash.

When the government closed its case last week, prosecutors rejected the subject of privacy as a practical distraction. “Real money was not in the so-called” intimacy “for normal people,” said Benjamin Gianforti, one of the prosecutors. “It was by hiding dirty money for criminals.”

Storm and the other developers even took the wearing of a tornado silver brand t-shirt sporting an image of a washing machine, prosecutors noted.

Storm lawyers, on the other hand, sought to assert that although their customer developed the technology exploited by bad actors, he had had no crime himself or manipulated with dirty money. “You will never hear any evidence that Roman or the [other] The co -founders participated in all hacks, “said Keri Curtis Axel, partner of the Waymaker law firm and Storm advisor, in his opening remarks.

Storm was powerless to prevent the abuse of the tornado, the defense would have argued, because he and the other developers had given up the ability to modify or deactivate the underlying code, in the spirit of decentralization.

Defense called for a number of witnesses to the position who spoke to the potential legitimate uses of the torade in cash. But Storm did not testify, which would have opened him to the counter-examination by the accusation.

In the end, despite the fact that the storm is guilty of the slightest offense to the transmission of money, the jury proved to be receptive to defense reasoning.

“The jury divided the proverbial baby,” explains Mark Bini, partner of the law firm Reed Smith’s Crypto Practice and former federal prosecutor. “Although they probably credited the convincing arguments of the defense according to which there are legitimate uses of confidentiality for mixers and that the storm was directly involved in any of the crimes in which tornado money was used, they felt uncomfortable with the measures that Tornado Cash took or did not take to prevent illicit uses.”

Storm is now waiting for the conviction, which generally takes place a few months after a conviction. Meanwhile, the DoJ must decide to try the money laundering count on which the jury could not agree.

“The government could choose to try Storm again on the suspended count, but on the basis of the notes which returned from the jury, I expect them to go to the conviction according to the conviction they have obtained,” explains Bini. “Although they are likely to plead for a rigid sentence, the jury’s verdict seems to withdraw a large part of the case of the government’s case.”

Update 8/06/25 at 3:32 p.m.: This article was updated with a declaration by Matthew Green, an expert witness for defense.