Judge Rules Tornado Cash Co-Founder to Face Trial

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm will face trial on alleged money laundering charges despite his motion to dismiss the case.

During a Sep. 26 telephonic conference, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York denied Storm’s motion to dismiss three charges brought against him by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to DeFi Education Fund’s Chief Legal Officer Amanda Tuminelli.

In an indictment last August, federal prosecutors alleged Storm “knowingly facilitated” the crypto mixer’s laundering of over $1 billion in criminal proceeds.

The Tornado Cash co-founder and co-founder Roman Semenov were allegedly charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to violate the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, alongside a charge of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

While Storm argued that the First Amendment protected his part in developing the Tornado Cash software, Judge Failla said the “functional capability” of code is not speech defined within the First Amendment, Coindesk reported. The district judge also reportedly said that the federal government’s efforts in combating money laundering and evasion of sanctions are “wholly unrelated” to the suppression of free speech.

Judge Failla added that she didn’t believe Tornado Cash to be “meaningfully different” from other financial services or money-transmitting firms.

“Judge Failla’s ruling denying [Storm’s] motion to dismiss the indictment is an assault on the freedom of software developers everywhere,” wrote Jake Chervinsky, Variant Fund’s Chief Legal Officer. “This will go down in history as a perversion of law and a travesty of justice.”

Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer, aims to provide privacy for crypto transactions by obfuscating the origin and destination of funds. North Korea-backed cyber hacking organization Lazarus reportedly utilized it for this purpose.

Storm’s trial is scheduled to start on Dec. 2 in New York, expected to last two weeks. Meanwhile, Semenov, a Russian national, remains at large.