Tornado Cash co-founder seeks dismissal of US crypto-laundering charges

Roman Storm, co-founder of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, seeks to dismiss all three accusations against him — including that he allegedly ran a money laundering operation and breached the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“By no stretch can Mr. Storm be deemed to have conspired to launder funds,” Storm’s attorneys argued in a March 29 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Storm’s lawyers claimed that Tornado Cash “became immutable” and made publicly available before being used by the hacker groups sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

As a result, Storm allegedly had little control over preventing a “sanctioned entity from using it.”

Prosecutors allege that Tornado Cash helped the North Korean Lazarus Group evade U.S. sanctions, reportedly enabling the regime to finance its nuclear program.

Furthermore, the lawyers argued that Tornado Cash was not a money-transmitting business because it did not charge a fee for sending payments and users had complete control of their cryptocurrency.

They said that Storm sought to create software solutions to ensure financial privacy for law-abiding cryptocurrency users and that the charges are “fatally flawed and should be dismissed.”

Storm pled not guilty to all allegations in September 2023. He was released on a $2 million bond shortly after his arrest and is primarily barred from traveling outside of specified regions of New York, New Jersey, Washington, and California.

This comes as the US government maintains its aggressive crackdown on cryptocurrency mixing services.

However, the crypto community values crypto mixers because they can give improved privacy and even confidentiality for people seeking to conduct anonymous business transactions for legitimate reasons.

At one point, the Arbitrum DAO proposed transferring approximately $1.3 million in ARB tokens to cover Storm’s legal bills.

The proposal stated that Tornado Cash is a beac

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Author: Rony Roy

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