{"id":37110,"date":"2025-07-15T22:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T22:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=37110"},"modified":"2025-07-15T22:47:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T22:47:17","slug":"legitimate-privacy-tool-or-dirty-money-laundromat-lawyers-debate-role-of-tornado-cash-on-day-1-of-roman-storm-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=37110","title":{"rendered":"Legitimate Privacy Tool or Dirty Money \u2018Laundromat\u2019? Lawyers Debate Role of Tornado Cash on Day 1 of Roman Storm Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NEW YORK \u2014 There is at least one fact that both the defense and the prosecution agree in the ongoing criminal money laundering trial of software developer Roman Storm: the product he helped to create and run \u2014\u00a0a once-popular crypto privacy tool called Tornado Cash \u2014\u00a0was exploited by hackers and cyber criminals to launder their dirty money.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What the parties do not agree on, and the fundamental question at the heart of Storm\u2019s trial, is whether Storm was able to prevent this behavior, whether he knew which criminals were using the Tornado Cash protocol and how and, most importantly, whether he should be held criminally liable for creating a tool that bad actors used to cover their tracks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Storm, 36, has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business \u2014\u00a0charges which, if Storm is convicted, carry a maximum combined sentence of 45 years in prison. His trial kicked off in Manhattan on Monday, and opening arguments took place Tuesday afternoon after lawyers selected a 12-person jury to oversee the three-week trial.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Read more: Jury Seated for Tornado Cash Dev Roman Storm\u2019s Trial<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

During the government\u2019s opening statements, prosecutor Kevin Mosley told the jury that Roman Storm \u201cknew that his business was laundering dirty money\u201d and that he made millions of dollars doing it. Mosley said the jury would see a photo of Storm wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a washing machine with Tornado Cash\u2019s logo on it \u2014\u00a0evidence that he allegedly knew exactly what Tornado Cash was being used for.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Storm, Mosley said, turned a blind eye to the hackers using his platform and ignored pleas from scam victims who reached out to him, asking for help recovering their money. Though prosecutors claim Storm either told the victims he couldn\u2019t help them or ignored them entirely, Mosley said Storm maintained full control over the Tornado Cash platform, even tweaking it \u201cto make it even better for criminals to hide their money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Some of Tornado Cash\u2019s users included North Korea\u2019s infamous state-sponsored hacking organization, the Lazarus Group, which used Tornado Cash to launder the proceeds of its 2022 hack of Axie Infinity\u2019s Ronin Network<\/a>. Mosley told the jury that, by allegedly facilitating the Lazarus Group\u2019s money laundering, Storm and his \u201cco-conspirators\u201d \u2014\u00a0fellow developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov \u2014\u00a0violated U.S. sanctions against North Korea. Mosley said Storm knew Tornado Cash was helping North Korea skirt U.S. sanctions because he allegedly texted Semenov and Pertsev, \u201cguys, we\u2019re done for\u201d after news of the Axie Infinity hack broke.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Storm\u2019s lawyers, of course, see the facts of the case very differently. In her opening statements to the jury, Keri Axel, a partner at Waymaker LLP, said that Storm\u2019s text to Pertsev and Semenov after the Axie Infinity hack had nothing to do with sanctions, and everything to do with the impact of the hack on Tornado Cash\u2019s reputation, as well as the price of the TORN token, which suffered in the wake of the hack. The washing machine t-shirt, she said, was a joke \u201cin poor taste.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Storm, Axel said, didn\u2019t work with hackers or scammers, and didn\u2019t want them using his product.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThese criminals, acting without any assistance from Roman [Storm], misused Tornado Cash,\u201d Axel said. \u201cYou will not see any evidence that he communicated with them or assisted them, absolutely none.\u201d The fact that Tornado Cash was continuously exploited by bad actors \u201cultimately killed his dream\u201d of creating a privacy tool that was widely adopted and respected throughout the crypto community, Axel said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It is privacy \u2014\u00a0and the legitimate need and desire for it \u2014 that sits at the core of Storm\u2019s defense. His lawyers told the jury that their client, a Kazakhstan-born U.S. citizen who taught himself to code while working odd jobs as a bus boy and a security guard before jumping to the tech industry, was inspired to create a privacy tool after meeting Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who she described to the jury as a \u201ccrypto rockstar.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While Axel admitted that Tornado Cash was \u201cmisused\u201d by bad actors, she said that they represented a minority of the tool\u2019s users \u2014 most of whom she said were normal people using Tornado Cash to preserve their privacy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a crime to make a useful thing that\u2019s misused by bad people,\u201d Axel said, comparing Tornado Cash to a smart phone used to scam people, or a hammer used to break into homes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

She explained to the jury that, because the blockchain is public and easily searchable, any known wallet address can be searched, and its transactions (and the value of its contents) can be viewed by anyone. Axel explained that, in the crypto industry, loss of privacy has led to the recent string of kidnappings and attacks on high-net worth individuals and executives.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would you feel if someone took your bank account and published it on the internet?\u201d Axel asked the jury. \u201cYou would feel exposed and probably unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Axel told the jury that they would hear testimony from a host of victims and hackers, none of which could be directly connected to Roman Storm. The hackers, she said, were only testifying \u201cin the hopes that they can get leniency in their own criminal cases\u201d and that Storm lacked the power to help their victims.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

First witness<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

After opening statements concluded, the government called its first witness, a Taiwan-born Georgia resident named Hanfeng Ling. Ms. Ling told the court how she was the victim of a pig butchering scam in the fall of 2021, that began with a wrong-number Whatsapp message. The scammer convinced Ling to transfer nearly $200,000 from her savings account to purchase crypto and then \u201cinvest\u201d the crypto in a fake foreign exchange trading platform.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Ms. Ling\u2019s testimony will continue on Wednesday. Nathan Rehn, the lead prosecutor, told the court that he expects her testimony will be followed by four more government witnesses on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The bulk of Storm\u2019s trial is expected to take place over three weeks, followed by jury deliberation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 There is at least one fact that both the defense and the prosecution agree in the ongoing criminal money laundering trial of software developer Roman Storm: the product he helped to create and run \u2014\u00a0a once-popular crypto privacy tool called Tornado Cash \u2014\u00a0was exploited by hackers and cyber criminals to launder their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-37110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}