New York – Roman Storm, Tornado Cash’s developer over -corned in Manhattan, accused that the confidentiality tool he created has helped pirates and other cybercriminals whiten more than a billion dollars in criminal products, will not take the position, his lawyers said in court on Tuesday.
Storm told the district judge Katherine Polk Failla of the American district court of the South District of New York (SDNY) that he knew that he had the right to testify for his own defense, but chose not to do so. After Storm made his decision, his defense team, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, posed his file on Tuesday afternoon.
During three days of witness testimony, the defense argued that Storm was only the developer of a legitimate confidentiality tool which was sometimes exploited by bad actors – something that he and his co -founders could not do little to stop, because the Treasury Protocol of Tornado and his swimming pools were immutable. While Storm and the other Tornado species co-founders have earned money thanks to the sale of torn tokens, they did not take advantage of Tornado Cash directly, witnesses said. And, although the prosecutors tried to represent Storm and his co-founders as indifferent-even insensitive-the fate of piracy victims whose money was bleached through tornado money, witnesses, group cats and messages showed that Storm and his co-founders were not satisfied with pirates using their platform.
In the messages between Storm and its co-founder, Roman Semenov (which also faces the same accusations and remains in freedom), Storm spoke his concern following major hacks, including the hacking of Ronin Bridge in 2022, in which the North Korean pirates stole $ 600 million and channeled part of the profits thanks to the Tornado Cash. In the cat, Storm and Semenov have discussed the addition of the pirate portfolio to the blocked list of the Tornado user interface.
“We must urgently tell everyone that we do not want these people to the front,” Storm told Semenov.
In another series of messages after the hacking of Ronin Bridge, Storm told Semenov that the use of Tornado Cash hackers was “very serious”.
After the 2022 piracy of the Harmony Horizon bridge, in which some profits crossed the Tornado Cash, Storm – Messaging with Haseeb Qureshi, Director of the venture capital company of Crypto Dragonfly Capital which invested nearly $ 1 million in the Tornado Cash Parent Peppersec Inc. – said: “I am happy that these fuckers are detected.
Privacy value
The defense of Storm aroused witness to witnesses detailing the non -criminal reasons why someone might want to use a tool like Tornado Cash to separate their identity from its financial transactions.
Dr. Matthew Green, renowned cryptography expert and computer teacher at Johns Hopkins University, told the jury on Tuesday that the lack of privacy was a “bug” in the majority of cryptocurrencies, exposing users to pirate threats and other attackers.
Green – who offered his STORM Defense Experts Specifications for free, explained that, without a tool like Tornado Cash, Ethereum users exhibit personal information sensitive to each transaction, including the amount of money they have, what they spend on and with whom they are associated with. This presents a range of security risks, including phishing attempts, fraud and “key attacks”, which, according to Green, has “accelerated” in recent years.
Following steps
Whether the jury is put on the side of the accusation from the point of view of the Tornado Cash or that of the Defense has not yet been decided.
Tomorrow, the two parties will have the opportunity to summarize their arguments in the closing statements to the jury, after which the jury will be educated by the judge on the accusations against Storm, then released.
