New York, Monday, November 08, 2024 – The trial of Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, has been pushed back to April 14, 2025, after a ruling from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Katherine Polk Failla made the decision during a telephone conference on November 1, 2023, granting Storm’s legal team more time to prepare.
Storm faces serious charges, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and sanctions violations, along with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. His defense argues that the allegations are unfounded and stem primarily from his role in developing the cryptocurrency mixing service, Tornado Cash.
In 2023, both Storm and fellow co-founder Roman Semenov were indicted after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Tornado Cash as a Specially Designated National in August 2022. The Treasury accused the mixer of facilitating the laundering of funds for malicious actors, raising significant concerns within the crypto community.
At present, Semenov remains at large and is listed on the FBI’s most wanted list. Storm, on a $2 million bond since his arrest, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Meanwhile, in a separate case, Alexey Pertsev, another co-founder of Tornado Cash, was arrested in the Netherlands in 2022. He was convicted of money laundering in May 2024 and sentenced to over five years in prison, adding further scrutiny to the legal challenges faced by those associated with the cryptocurrency mixer.
