NEW YORK – Tornado Cash Roman Storm developer was found guilty of conspiracy to operate a license -free money transmission company, decided a Manhattan jury on Wednesday.
The jury has not been able to make a verdict unanimous on the remaining accusations, a plot in order to commit money laundering and the conspiracy to violate international sanctions, despite four days of deliberations after the trial of three weeks. A date of determination of the sentence has not yet been fixed, and it is not difficult to know if the prosecutors will choose to try the storm on other accusations. The prosecutors declared on Wednesday afternoon to the court that they would confide internally and decide.
Storm was arrested in 2023 and accused of helping pirates and other cybercriminals, including the famous hacking team from North Korea, the Lazare group, washes more than a billion dollars in dirty money through Tornado Cash, the cryptographic confidential confidentiality tool that he helped to develop.
After the jury read the verdict, the prosecutors moved to Storm, who is currently on bond, to be placed in prison to wait for the determination of the sentence, arguing that “he is from Russia” (Storm was born in Kazakhstan and is an American citizen who lived in Seattle, Washington for a decade), ” Immigmerie and financial means to flee the country, according to the immigration press “and the means of making the press.
Storm lawyers have pushed back, arguing that the developer is not a risk of theft. Keri Axel, partner of Waymaker and Storm lawyer, district judge Katherine Polke Failla, from the South District of New York (SDNY), had returned her passport and has deep family ties – including the joint custody of a five -year -old girl in the state of Washington, where he lives and extended his family to Sacramento, California.
Failla finally caught up on the side of Storm lawyers, arguing that she did not think that Storm was a risk of theft because he was only sentenced for one accusation.
“He can appeal, he has any incitement to stay and fight,” said Failla. “It does not flow a risk of theft, given the size of the link. There are many fights in this case before the conviction, and I think that Mr. Storm will remain for this.”
The verdict in the case of Storm occurs only a week after the developers of Samurai Wallet, a confidentiality tool focused on Bitcoin similar to Tornado Cash, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy manager to operate a company of transmission of money without license. The promoters, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, changed their initial pleadings “not guilty” after concluding an agreement with the prosecutors who saw the accusations of higher money money conspiracy.
