Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm's Case Proceeds to Trial as Judge Denies Dismissal

Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm will proceed to trial in the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) case against him.

During a hearing on Thursday, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) denied Storm's dismissal appeal of the charges against him.

Faila ruled that Storm's arguments about free speech, short notice of potential legal violations, and Tornado Cash's operations were insufficient to counter the DOJ's complaint and that the government had presented credible allegations against the developer.

“At this stage in the case, this court cannot simply accept Mr. Storm's narrative that he is being prosecuted merely for writing code,” Failla said. “If the jury ultimately accepts this narrative, then it will acquit. But there's no basis for me to decide that as a matter of law.”

The Russian national developer argued that being prosecuted for coding is akin to being prosecuted for speech and that the First Amendment of the US Constitution should protect writing code.

“The functional capability of code is not speech within the meaning of the First Amendment,” Failla rebutted.

"The Court finds that the government has a substantial interest in promoting a secure financial system by combating money laundering, by combating the operation of unregistered money transmitting services and by combating the evasion of sanctions," she said.

"These interests are wholly unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and the applicability of these laws to destroy conduct does not burden substantially more speech than necessary."

Failla added that Tornado Cash was not "meaningfully different" from other money-transmitting businesses and that it was not “an altruistic venture."

Storm was charged in August 2023 alongside fellow Tornado Cash developer, Roman Semonov, for their work on the crypto mixer: conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Powers Act.

The developer pleaded not guilty to all charges, with his lawyers arguing in March that he simply wrote Tornado Cash's code and he was not responsible for any illegal activities that occurred afterwards.

Failla argued that. "“Now, the law is clear, but to be guilty of money laundering, the defendants need not be guilty of, involved in, or even aware of the specifics of the specified unlawful activity. The government did not have to allege that Mr. Storm was aware of the specific nature of, much less a participant in, the underlying criminal activity.”

Storm's request to compel the DOJ to provide documents from Dutch authorities related to the conviction of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev for money laundering was also denied by Faila, who ruled that the defence failed to show the relevance of the materials.

"Of course the defense argues that because it does not know what's in those materials, it must couch its description in terms like 'may,'" she said. "There must be some showing that the MLAT materials are in fact, and not just in theory, relevant to the [case]."

Pertsev was jailed in August 2022 after Tornado Cash was blacklisted by the US government, which alleged that the platform was utilized by the North Korean hacker group, Lazarus.

Tornado Cash's founders are not charged with writing software – they are charged with operating centralized, profit-driven enterprises that violated the law.

In May, Vitalik Buterin gave 30 ETH to support the legal fees of Tornado Cash Pertsev and Storm

Storm's trial is scheduled to start in on December 2 in New York and is expected to run for two weeks. If found guilty, he could face up to 45 years in prison.