Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Pleads Not Guilty to Money Laundering, Sanctions Evasion

Updated: 07 September 2023

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Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm pleaded ”not guilty” to money laundering charges and sanctions evasion and was released under house arrest on bail of $2 million.

Storm, a dual US and Russian citizen who was arrested two weeks ago, was ordered to receive drug testing regularly. He will not be allowed to contact witnesses, co-defendants, or victims of his alleged crimes.

Prosecutors claim that Storm and Tornado Cash co-founders Roman Semenov and Alexey Pertsev assisted online criminals in laundering more than $1 billion in cryptocurrencies, much of it stolen by North Korean hackers, including the notorious Lazarus Group.

Pertsev was arrested in 2022 in the Netherlands and awaits trial there. Semenov was indicted together with Storm, although he has yet to be arrested.

How Tornado Cash Worked?

Tornado Cash mixed cryptocurrencies belonging to various users and obfuscated the origin of funds that went through them. Such services were originally invented to bring some privacy back to the crypto world, which was eliminated with the invention of block explorers.

US Attorney Damien Williams said Storm and the other developers knew what their service was used for and knowingly facilitated money laundering.