Roman Storm’s solicitors said that since “there was nothing” Storm could have done to stop sanctioned businesses from utilising the crypto mixer, the accusations are “fatally flawed” and ought to be dropped.
Roman Storm, a co-founder of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer, has filed a motion to have all three of the allegations against him dropped. The motion claims that Storm violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and ran a money laundering operation.
“Mr. Storm cannot in any way be considered to have planned to launder money,” Storm’s attorneys argued in a filing submitted to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 29.
Storm’s attorneys contended that Tornado Cash was created, “became immutable,” and made available to the public prior to being utilised by hacking organisations that were approved by the US Department of Treasury. Therefore, Storm had limited ability to stop an authorised organisation from using it at the time of the alleged misbehaviour.
The main focus of the accusations is how Tornado Cash is said to have helped the North Korean Lazarus Group get under US sanctions, enabling the government to finance its nuclear programme.
Moreover, the attorneys argued that Tornado Cash was not a money-transmitting company because customers kept complete control over their cryptocurrency and there was no fee associated with sending money. They said that Storm’s intentions were to develop software solutions that would allow law-abiding cryptocurrency users to have financial privacy and that the accusations were “fatally flawed and should be dismissed.”
Storm reportedly entered a not guilty plea to all allegations in September 2023. Shortly after his arrest, he was freed on a $2 million bond and is now mostly prohibited from leaving specific areas of New York, New Jersey, Washington, and California.
The US government is still actively targeting cryptocurrency-mixing services, at the same time as this. According to reports, the $400 million cryptocurrency mixing business Bitcoin Fog’s founder was found guilty of money laundering on March 12.
In addition to running an illegal money-transmitting business and breaking the D.C. Money Transmitters Act, Roman Sterlingov was found guilty of money laundering and money laundering conspiracy.
Yet, the cryptocurrency community believes that crypto mixers are really valuable since they can offer more secrecy and privacy protection for people who wish to transact business anonymously for justifiable purposes.
Storm’s legal costs were once thought to be covered by the Arbitrum DAO through the allocation of roughly $1.3 million worth of ARB tokens. But the plan has since been dropped, and the grounds for the removal are still in place.