Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, two of the founders of Tornado Cash, face criminal charges for laundering more than $1bn in illegal gains. A recently unsealed indictment details numerous accusations against the pair, including violating regulatory sanctions and pushing ill-gotten money through Tornado Cash to hide criminally attained proceeds. This includes handling hundreds of millions for the Lazarus Group, a government-supported hacking outfit in North Korea.
Tornado Cash founders charged with laundering +$1bn
A statement by the US Justice Department confirmed the arrest of Storm on Wednesday in Washington State. Semenov, a Russian national, remains at large.
James Smith Source: LinkedIn
In a CBNC interview, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, James Smith, commented:
We’re treating this like any other fugitive now. We’re working with law enforcement, outside and inside of our agency, trying to locate and arrest this individual … We will work whatever avenues — whatever we need to do — to arrest, whether it be domestic or international.
Some use Tornado Cash as a way to safeguard their privacy in the crypto arena. When using a crypto mixing service, such as Tornado Cash, crypto wallet account particulars and details are protected. However, the Tornado Cash service made headlines in crypto heists, which included the Ronin token theft of $615m and a $100m attack on a US-based startup called Harmony.
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US Attorney, Damian Williams, alleges that Storm and Semenov knew they were aiding hackers and fraudsters while perpetuating their offerings as a technical privacy service. In response, Storm’s lawyer, Brian Klein, stated:
Brian Klein Source: LinkedIn
We are incredibly disappointed that the prosecutors chose to charge Mr. Storm … and did so based on a novel legal theory with dangerous implications for all software developers.
