Roman Storm, co-founder and developer of Tornado Cash, will not face trial for charges related to money laundering and violations of sanctions until April 2025. During a conference call on November 1 with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Katherine Polk Failla announced that Storm’s trial has been postponed to April 14, 2025. Storm’s legal representatives have been actively seeking to have the charges dismissed, arguing that they stem solely from his role in writing code for the cryptocurrency mixing service.
In 2023, Storm and fellow co-founder Roman Semenov were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate sanctions, and conspiracy to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business. These indictments sparked significant backlash from various sectors of the cryptocurrency community.
The charges against Storm and Semenov were initiated after the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed Tornado Cash on its Specially Designated Nationals list in August 2022. The agency asserted that the mixer had consistently failed to implement effective measures to prevent it from laundering funds for cybercriminals.
As of the time of this report, Semenov was not in custody in the U.S. and remains on the FBI’s most wanted list. Storm, who was arrested in 2023, has been released on a $2 million bond and has pleaded not guilty to all accusations.
In a related development, Alexey Pertsev, another co-founder of Tornado Cash, was arrested in the Netherlands in 2022 on charges of money laundering. He was convicted in May 2024 and sentenced to over five years in prison.