Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, has requested a US federal judge to clear him of his sole conviction for unlicensed money transmission and the jury’s unresolved charges regarding money laundering and sanctions violations, contending that prosecutors did not establish he intended to aid bad actors in misusing the crypto mixer.
According to legal documents submitted on Sept. 30 to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and analyzed by Cointelegraph, Storm’s defense argued that prosecutors failed to demonstrate his intent to assist bad actors using Tornado Cash. This, the defense asserts, would invalidate the basis for his conviction based on negligent inaction.
“The assertion that Storm and bad actors were aware they were using Tornado Cash and he neglected to take adequate measures to stop them represents a negligence theory,” the motion specifies.
The defense further posits that “in the absence of affirmative evidence showing Mr. Storm acted with the intent to help bad actors,” the government attempted to fulfill its willfulness requirement by claiming that the defendant did not prevent misuse. “This claim contradicts the willfulness standard and lacks legal support,” the motion states.
A motion for acquittal requests that the judge dismiss charges or a verdict on the grounds that the prosecution’s evidence, even if accepted as true, is legally inadequate.
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Fighting for the right to privacy
Tornado Cash is a decentralized and non-custodial smart contract-based Ether (ETH) mixer that employs zero-knowledge proof-based encryption to improve transaction privacy. It was established by Roman Storm and Roman Semenov in 2019, enabling users to obscure the on-chain traceability of their ETH.
The service faced legal complications mainly because it was allegedly exploited for laundering billions of dollars in illicit funds, including funds associated with North Korean hackers. Tornado Cash was also accused of facilitating money laundering, with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) claiming it processed over $7 billion in digital currency since 2019, with approximately 30% linked to illegal activities.
Storm was apprehended in late August 2023, while co-founder Semenov appeared on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals list. The arrest was carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division in Washington, D.C. A US Department of Justice official opposed Storm’s retrial in late August.
The case has sparked significant criticism from the crypto sector. In August, the pro-crypto US lobby group Blockchain Association warned that Storm’s conviction could set a “dangerous” precedent for developers and privacy. The group also highlighted that Storm did not control the crypto transactions that occurred through the protocol.
“Roman Storm built privacy tech that operated without his custody/control over the funds of Tornado Cash users. […] Tornado Cash functioned as non-custodial software, meaning that users maintained total control of their assets at all times.”
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Crypto community at the forefront of the fight for privacy
Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto community emerged from a pro-cryptography movement known as the cypherpunks. While numerous individuals in the crypto community currently emphasize the financial aspects of blockchain technology, privacy remains a pivotal battleground for the industry.
Last week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized the European Union’s proposed “Chat Control” legislation, cautioning that it endangers the right to privacy in digital communications. The legislation in question would mandate messaging platforms to implement client-side pre-encryption scanning of content for illegal material.
“You cannot make society secure by making people insecure,” Buterin contended. He also noted that backdoors created for law enforcement are “inevitably hackable” and compromise everyone’s safety.
Some experts view this as a regulatory misstep that will drive users towards ungovernable web3 alternatives. Hans Rempel, co-founder and CEO of Diode, recently remarked to Cointelegraph that the law represents a dangerous overreach, asserting that “granting an inherently corruptible entity nearly unlimited visibility into the private lives of individuals is incompatible with a truthful value statement of digital privacy.”
Magazine: Can privacy survive in US crypto policy after Roman Storm’s conviction?
