The founders of Tornado Cash a crypto mixing platform Roman Storm and Roman Semenov are set for Trial after the United States court rejected a motion to dismiss the charges pegged on the founders of the platform by the United States Department of Justice.
This development comes one year after the US DOJ announced an indictment on the two founders of Tornado Cash.
US authorities have opined that Storm and Roman are two out of the three persons who created and promoted Tornado Cash a platform linked to the laundering of over $1 billion since its creation.
A platform is an important tool for popular bad actors in the industry even notorious ones like the Lazarus Group.
Tornado Cash is a popular decentralized cryptocurrency protocol that mixes multiple assets in a bid to obscure the transaction trail of the assets. This feature makes it very handy for Bad actors who don’t want their transaction trail followed.
Roman Storm one of the founders of the platform filed a motion in response to the charges brought against citing infringement of his First Amendment rights amongst other issues raised by him.
On Sept 26, US Judge Katherin Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York struck out the motion filed by Roman Storm meaning the developer is set to engage in a full-scale trial.
The Judge argued that Storm’s claims in his motion that his project was an expression of his free speech is not feasible given that the “Functional capability of a code and a speech was not included in the First Amendment Rights Act. She concluded that the matter raised by Storm’s legal team are factual issue and should be tried in addressed in court.
The Case Against Tornado Cash
Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer protocol is been accused by relevant authorities for being a platform created for illicit activities in the industry. Several scammers have used the platform to launder their stolen assets making retrieval of the assets near impossible.
Scammers like the WazirX scammer who looted $230 million from India’s biggest exchange made use of the platform to launder the stolen assets and several reports reveal that the notorious Lazarus group is also frequent clients.
These activities by bad actors led to the charges leveled against the founders of the platform.
What to Know
- Roman Storm one of the co-founders is set for trial on December 2 in New York. Roan Storm and Semenov are charged with one count of conspiracy each to commit money laundering, operate an unregistered money-transmitting business, and violate the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.
- Roman Semenov is currently at large with his whereabouts unknown at the moment.
