Tornado cash founders charged with money laundering/sanctions violations

Quote from: arabspaceship123 on August 08, 2025, 09:27:38 AM

Roman Storm's going to fight his case in the court he's got a good lawyer who's defending him. I don't know what's happened to Samourai or it's devs you shouldn't say things about them if you don't know it's true.

Quote from: bbc.reporter on August 08, 2025, 02:49:13 AM

This has shown that Roman has not agreed to become a government informant, not very much like the developers of Samourai wallet who the opensource privacy community and the cryptospace community should not now trust.

I am only speculating that they have become government informants, however, we have witnessed this before where detained people are tricked and forced to make deals with the government.

It is a speculation as I have mentioned already. Also, these people behind the government do not offer deals to people who are being imprisoned, prosecuted or people who they consider criminals without having something in exchange.

Also, do we not already know that the government is going after different projects and developers of privacy software in the cryptospace? Do you reckon the government will not do dirty tactics to complete their mission? We should not be naive about this.

News update!

Similar to what was speculated, it appears that Roman Storm will be going to round 2 according to this article heheheh. This will very much show and encourage other development teams that they should fight for there rights and fight against cases that will create bad precedents. The government on the illegal money transmitting case and the jury decision on this are wrong! Tornado Cash is not a money transmitter.

The Tornado Cash co-founder may still be reeling from his three-week courtroom drama that culminated in a guilty verdict of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business, but he’s already scooping up donations to mount an appeal.

Storm’s lawyer Keri Axel, has confirmed that they’ll appeal the verdict.

The Ethereum Foundation offered another $500,000 donation to fund Storm’s appeal on Thursday, according to its official X account.

“Privacy is normal and writing code is not a crime,” the account tweeted.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was among major donors who added nearly $5 million into Storm’s war chest ahead of the trial.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/roman-storm-is-collecting-money-to-mount-appeal/

If Roman Storm's asking for donations to pay his lawyers fee he's going to get many ppl donating. They're donating because they want privacy to win they're saying they've got rights to have privacy. His case isn't over he'll fight in court it's going to be a long legal fight.

Quote from: arabspaceship123 on August 11, 2025, 04:08:36 PM

You're right, and as what we have seen, the donations come for Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik himself as they know that this case is very important for them.

As the litigation targets developers for code misuse? So let's see, for sure this case are going to drag for years and hopefully he lawyers will need to appeal right away. It's a mixed verdict to there is a still a chance for Storm not to go to jail and spend his live inside in 5 years. So let's hope that he will still get acquitted and judge ruling out against the earlier conviction.

Quote from: arabspaceship123 on August 11, 2025, 04:08:36 PM

On Paradigm and the Ethereum Foundation's donations, they are doing this because they are very much aware that the government is clearly wrong. The government has used manipulative tactics for this trial where the prosecutors were telling the defenses that using privacy as a reason for the motivation of creating Tornado Cash was not allowed. They clearly wanted to manipulate the jury into speculating that Roman Storm is a moneylaunderer. This is the distortion of reality and this case, if the government asks for a retrial on the deadlocked charges, should not be allowed.

Roman Storm's got bail so he's going to fight the case with access to his lawyers night & day. If he wasn't given bail he'd be inside jail so he wouldn't be allowed to meet his lawyers unless it's in visiting hours. The donation's will give him belief he's got many ppl supporting him.

Quote from: Dave1 on August 12, 2025, 03:34:33 AM

It appears that creators of many DeFi platforms and other types of decentralized projects in the cryptospace are presently safe from harassment from the government under the administration of the Donald. This very much is an approval for institutional investors to buy different types of DeFi tokens for their digital asset treasuries.

I will not be shocked to witness the next big market bubble in the cryptospace to be caused by digital asset treasuries.

Weeks after Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm was convicted on a money transmission charge, a Department of Justice official said the agency would reject similar charges going forward.

“Where the evidence shows that software is truly decentralised and solely automates peer to peer transactions, and where a third-party does not have custody and control over user assets, new [money transmission] charges against a third party will not be approved,” Matthew Galeotti, acting assistant attorney general of the department’s Justice Criminal Division, said Thursday.

“If criminal intent is present, other charges may be appropriate.”

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/devs-of-decentralised-protocols-wont-be-prosecuted-doj-says/

This very much might encourage open source developers from America that have migrated to other countries that have been more welcoming to developers to move again back to America to continue developing their crypto startups.

Much of the talented developers are presently Singapore or in Dubai, leaving less talent in America. If the Donald wants America to be the leader in blockchain technology, there should be laws to protect these developers.

Crypto industry calls for new bill to protect DeFi devs following Tornado Cash founder conviction

Protect developers from being prosecuted like Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm, or risk choking crypto innovation in the US.

That’s essentially the message of a letter sent by a group of 115 crypto firms, builders, investors, and advocates to the Senate Committee on Banking, and Committee on Agriculture on Wednesday.

The letter urges lawmakers to introduce provisions into the Clarity Act to shield open-source developers from being misclassified or prosecuted as operators of money transmitting businesses.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/crypto-industry-calls-for-clarity-act-to-protect-defi-devs-after-tornado-cash-conviction/

If they are not doing illegal acts they should not be arrested. If developers are scared to work in teams which hire in America they will go to a country which does not arrest them for making software for crypto users.

Quote from: bbc.reporter on August 31, 2025, 02:51:38 AM

This is a small news update for those who want to know what has occurrences has happened after the deadlock on Roman Storm's case.

It appears that Roman's lawyers are asking the judge to acquit Roman from the charges that ended with a deadlock on the trial.

He was only found guilty of operating a money transmitting service which is also arguable because Tornado Cash is not a money transmitting service. This will certainly create a bad precedent for DeFi.

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm has asked a federal judge to toss charges that have hung over the software engineer ever since his closely-watched criminal trial ended in August.

Storm’s motion to acquit comes exactly eight weeks after jurors found him guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which comes with a maximum prison sentence of five years.

But jurors were deadlocked on the most severe charges, conspiracy to launder money and to evade sanctions. Those charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and prosecutors have yet to decide whether to re-try Storm on both counts.

Storm’s attorneys have asked a judge to acquit the software engineer on all three counts, arguing that the evidence presented during his three-week trial did not prove he had acted with criminal intent and that the case should never have been tried in New York.

If successful, it wouldn’t be the first time that Storm’s lead attorney has convinced a judge to vacate a jury’s ruling in a criminal trial.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/tornado-cash-dev-roman-storm-asks-judge-to-toss-conviction/

The matter with Tornado.cash went in an unexpected direction.
The original owners of the domain could not renew it due to sanctions, which someone used to register the domain and set up a phishing site.
Many had this domain in their bookmarks, so they didn't even check the originality.
For now, it is assumed that over 1000 ETH has been drained, but there are speculations that this amount is greater than 4000 ETH

https://crypto.news/ethereum-user-loses-1010-eth-to-phishing/

Quote from: examplens on August 21, 2026, 07:38:05 AM

The matter with Tornado.cash went in an unexpected direction.

The whole story raises a lot of questions, for example

Quote

On-chain analyst Specter revealed that the purported victim may himself be a threat actor, with stolen funds potentially originating from illicit activity. Although the victim claimed to have migrated assets from Bitcoin to Ethereum due to a hardware wallet compromise, on-chain data shows the 73 BTC (~$4.6M) originated from the Whirlpool Bitcoin mixer just two weeks prior before being bridged to Ethereum and deposited into the fake frontend.

Specter noted that routing funds across multiple mixers is inconsistent with simply escaping a hardware wallet drain, adding that the same individual was active in Telegram groups dedicated to private key cracking and brute-force tools, pointing to a potential "dog-eat-dog" exploit between threat actors.

If the person who sent 1000 Ethereum is active in groups on Telegram dedicated to hacking private keys and knows how to use Whirlpool, it is unlikely that he would make a beginner's mistake like this, or at least he would try Tornado DOOT cash domai with a small amount or run protocol code instead of relying on this link.

Quote from: examplens on August 21, 2026, 07:38:05 AM

Well, well, well... That's quite unfortunate. I had no idea about tornado.cash still being that popular, especially after undergoing different shortcomings after getting sanctioned. I think at one point, the official domain was even offline.

I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that many users still trusted this platform after the chaos, and we can see that by the huge amount of ETH that has been drained so far.