NEW YORK – Tornado cash developer Roman Storm has been found guilty of conspiracy to operate an unauthorized remittance business, a Manhattan ju judge decided Wednesday.
Despite four days of deliberation after the three-week trial, the ju judges were unable to reach the remaining charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to violate international sanctions. No date for the judgment has been set yet. It is currently unclear whether prosecutors will choose to retry the storm with the remaining charges. Prosecutors said the court would award the decision internally to the decision on Wednesday afternoon.
Storm was arrested in 2023, and hackers and other cybercriminals, including the famous North Korean hacking team Lazarus Group, were charged with washing more than $1 billion in dirty money through Tornado Cash, a crypto privacy tool he developed.
After the ju judge read the verdict, the prosecutors moved for Storm, who is currently on bail, and claimed that “he came from Russia” and was remanded to prison (Storm was a US citizen born in Kazakhstan and lived in Seattle, Washington, and reported that he had fled the city beyond A Decade.
Storm’s lawyers retreated, claiming that the developer was not a flight risk. Waymaker partner and Storm’s attorney Keri Axel informed District Judge Katherine Porke Faira of the Southern District of New York that Storm surrendered his passport and expanded his family to Sacramento, California, including deep family custody, including co-custody of his five-year-old daughter in Washington.
Fila eventually sided with Storm’s lawyers and claimed that Storm didn’t think he was a flight risk because Storm was convicted of one count.
“He may appeal, he has every incentive to stay and fight,” Fila said. “He’s not a risk of flying given the size of the bond. There’s a lot of fight left in this case before the verdict, and I think Mr. Storm will stay for that.”
The verdict in Storm’s case came just a week later by the developers of Samourai Wallet, a Bitcoin-centric privacy tool similar to Tornado Cash, pleaded guilty to one count of each of their conspiracies to run an unlicensed remittance business. Developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill have changed their initial “not guilty” plea after signing a contract with prosecutors, which has reduced allegations of money laundering conspiracy.
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