Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Guilty on One Count in Federal Crypto Case

WIRED

a day ago

Aug 6, 2025 2:27 PM A federal jury found crypto developer Roman Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed crypto business, but cleared him of sanctions violations and deadlocked on a money laundering charge. The facade of the Department of Justice building is seen in Washington, D.C. Photograph:Roman Storm, one of the developers of crypto anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, has been found guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business by a jury in a court in New York. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
In 2023, the US Department of Justice charged Storm with three violations: conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
On Wednesday, at the end of a four-week trial and a deliberation period spanning five days, the jury returned a partial verdict: It found Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and not guilty of sanctions evasion. It failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the money laundering count, which carries a far greater penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
'We are grateful the jury did not convict Roman for violating sanctions or laundering money. There are serious legal issues with the sole remaining count involving unlicensed money transmission,' says Brian Klein, partner at law firm Waymaker, one of Storm's representatives at trial. 'We will not stop fighting for Roman and expect him to be fully vindicated.'
Storm intends to file for the single conviction to be dismissed in a post-trial motion, his counsel tells WIRED.
Tornado Cash was developed in 2019 by Storm and two others, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov. The idea was to conceal the ownership of crypto coins, by pooling funds belonging to various different parties, then dishing them into brand-new wallets, thereby interrupting the public trail of transactions recorded on a blockchain.
Services like Tornado Cash are marketed as essential to improving the level of privacy available to crypto owners. Privacy has long been a preoccupation among crypto ideologues, but the issue is especially pertinent at present, after a string of violent kidnappings targeting people known to possess large amounts of crypto.
'Privacy is a very pragmatic thing for basic safety,' Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of the Ethereum crypto network, told WIRED before the start of the trial. 'If someone knows who has the coins, someone knows who to target.'
But the US government saw Tornado Cash differently—as a tailor-made vehicle for money laundering. When it brought charges in 2023, the DOJ argued that Storm had built and profited from a tool that allowed criminals to launder at least $1 billion in crypto, among them hackers with ties to North Korea.
'Claiming to offer the Tornado Cash service as a 'privacy service,' the defendants in fact knew that it was a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion,' the indictment alleged.
At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that they claimed proved that Tornado Cash was designed for money laundering from the outset. Their witnesses included a scam victim whose stolen funds were said to have passed through Tornado Cash—though this account was contested online by prominent members of the crypto industry—and a convicted fraudster who used the service to launder ill-gotten gains. 'Washy, washy,' the fraudster supposedly wrote to his girlfriend, in a message about Tornado Cash.
When the government closed its case last week, prosecutors dismissed the topic of privacy as a convenient distraction. 'The real money wasn't in so-called 'privacy' for normal people,' Benjamin Gianforti, one of the prosecutors, is quoted as saying. 'It was in hiding dirty money for criminals.'
Storm and the other developers even took to wearing a Tornado Cash-branded t-shirt emblazoned with an image of a washing machine, prosecutors noted.
Storm's attorneys, meanwhile, sought to argue that although their client had developed the technology exploited by bad actors, he had not engaged in any criminality himself, nor handled any dirty money. 'You'll never hear any evidence that Roman or the [other] co-founders participated in any hacks,' said Keri Curtis Axel, partner at law firm Waymaker and counsel to Storm, in her opening remarks.
Storm was powerless to prevent the abuses of Tornado Cash, the defence reportedly argued, because he and the other developers had relinquished the ability to modify or disable the underlying code, in the spirit of decentralization.
The defence called to the stand a number of witnesses that spoke to the potential legitimate uses for Tornado Cash. But Storm did not testify, which would have opened him up to cross-examination by the prosecution.
Ultimately, despite finding Storm guilty of the lesser money transmitting violation, the jury proved receptive to the defense's line of reasoning.
'The jury split the proverbial baby,' says Mark Bini, partner at law firm Reed Smith's crypto practice and former federal prosecutor. 'While they likely credited the defense's compelling arguments that there are legitimate privacy uses for mixers and that Storm was not directly involved in any of the crimes in which Tornado Cash was used, they felt uncomfortable with the steps that Tornado Cash took or didn't take to prevent illicit uses.'
Storm now awaits sentencing, which usually takes place a few months after a conviction. Meanwhile, the DOJ must decide whether to retry the money laundering count on which the jury could not agree.
'The government could choose to retry Storm on the hung count, but based on the notes that were coming back from the jury, I expect that they will go to sentencing based upon the conviction they secured,' says Bini. 'While they are likely to argue for a stiff sentence, the jury's verdict appears to take a lot of the sting out of the government's case.'