Tornado Cash Developers Charged With Money Laundering and Sanctions Violations That Facilitated Over $1 Billion in Illicit Transactions
Two more developers who worked on Tornado Cash, an Ethereum network-based privacy protocol designed to obfuscate the link between sending and receiving addresses, are being charged by the US Depart of Justice.
Developers Roman Storm and Roman Semenov are both being charged with money laundering and sanctions violations, owing to their work on the protocol.
Tornado Cash wasfirst sanctioned by the US government in 2022, with another of the protocol’s co-founders Alexey Pertsev getting arrested in Amsterdam almost immediately afterwards.
As per the DoJ, Tornado Cash has been used to launder billions in funds, including hundreds of millions for North Korea’s notorious hacking cartel the Lazarus Group.
Roman Storm has already been arrested, while Semenov has been sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
In a statement, the DoJ accused Storm and Semenov of knowingly facilitating money laundering.
"While publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service, Storm and Semenov in fact knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes,” US Attorney Damien Williams said in the statement.
“Today’s indictment is a reminder that money laundering through cryptocurrency transactions violates the law, and those who engage in such laundering will face prosecution”.
The DoJ goes on to claim that Storm and Semenov maintained control over Tornado Cash and could have implemented transaction monitoring, or anti-money laundering features, had they so chosen.
“The defendants and [Alexey Pertsev] recognized that they did not incorporate KYC or AML programs as required by law, and so they made misleading public statements to minimize their ownership and control of the Tornado Cash
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