The Justice Department said Thursday it would move forward with charges against the Rome Storm. Ethereum Coin mixer Tornado cash.
“The government is trying to storm intentionally conspire to commit money laundering, sanctions avoidance, transport and transmission of funds he knew,” a DOJ spokesman said. Decryption.
Federal prosecutors allege that Storm committed money laundering, ran an unauthorized remittance business, and engaged in a conspiracy to avoid US sanctions in a Manhattan court case for less than two months. Court filing.
However, the DOJ said it would abandon one aspect of the plot to operate unlicensed gold sender business fees. According to federal law, an illegal remittance business is defined as a failure to comply with a US remittance to send business registration requirements.
According to Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, the DOJ’s conspiracy aspect was inconsistent with guidance issued by Financial Crime Enforcement Network or the US Treasury office that combats financial crimes.
Fincen’s guidance advised that “non-obligatory entities” such as tornado cash are not gold senders. I said Previous Twitter in X’s post.
“Building neutral, non-radical techniques based on unsupported interpretations of the law should not be bound by unreasonable criminal standards,” said Amanda Tuminelli, executive director and chief legal officer of the Defi Education Fund. Decryption.
DOJ’s affirmation of the accusation against the storm Agency Notes Last month, it said it would most likely not be an operational bill for a mixing service, among other entities such as exchanges. In the memo, the DOJ said that, in contrast to the platform itself, they use crypto services to wash their funds to chase after bad actors.
Industry advocates celebrated the memo as evidence that the DOJ is turning new leaves against the mixer under US President Donald Trump’s code-friendly administration. It has been held by privacy advocates including whistleblower Edward Snowden explained Services like Tornado Cash are just tools that help users maintain privacy on the chain.
Strom’s case came to trial after US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla refused his motion to dismiss the case in September. Storm argued that his tornado cash development is protected as free speech, but Fila Found Further doubting money laundering using computer code is not a protected First Amendment activity.
March, US Treasury Department delete Tornado cash from a list of entities authorized by the Foreign Assets Control Agency or OFAC. The restrictions that prevented anyone in the US from using the service are: I was first imposed 2022. At the time, the US Treasury Department said that since its establishment in 2019, tornado cash had been used to “wash more than $7 billion.”
The US Treasury Department’s hassle came months after the US Court of Appeals in the 5th Circuit determined that the agency had it I was trampled on Authorization to grant tornado cash. The court has found that immutable smart contracts that cannot be altered or controlled should not be classified as property, as implied by Tornado’s cash.
A year ago, a Dutch court sentenced another tornado cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, to 64 months in prison for money laundering. But he was release He had been preparing to pursue an appeal from prison in February, under conditions of electronic surveillance.
DOJ, Storm and his lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Decryption.
Edited by James Rubin
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