New York-there is at least one fact that both the defense and the prosecution agree with the ongoing criminal money washing of software developer novel Storm: The product he helped create and drive-a once popular crypto-private life tool called Tornado Cash-Blev used by hackers and Cyber criminals to whitewash.
What the parties do not agree with and the basic question of the heart of Storm’s trial is whether Storm was able to prevent this behavior, whether he knew which criminals used the Tornado Contact Protocol, and how and most importantly, whether he should be held criminally responsible for creating a tool used by bad actors to cover their tracks.
Storm, 36, has been accused of conspiracy for committing money laundering, conspiracy to violate US sanctions and conspiracy to run an unlicensed money transmitting business – prosecutors who, if convicted, carry a maximum total sentence of 45 years in prison. His trial started in Manhattan on Monday, and opening arguments took place on Tuesday afternoon after lawyers elected a 12-person jury to oversee the three-week trial.
Read more: Jury sits for Tornado Cash Dev Roman Storm’s trial
During the government’s opening declarations, prosecutor Kevin Mosley told the jury that Roman Storm “knew his business laundered dirty money” and that he was making millions of dollars to do so. Mosley said the jury would see a photo of storm wearing a t-shirt with a photo of a washing machine with Tornado Cash’s logo on that certificate that he allegedly knew exactly what Tornado cash was used for.
Storm, Mosley said, turned the blind eye to the hackers using his platform and ignored pleas from scams who reached out to him and asked for help to recover their money. Although prosecutors claim that Storm either told the victims he couldn’t help them or ignore them completely, Mosley said Storm maintained full control of the Tornado Content Platform, and even fine -tuned it “to make it even better for criminals to hide their money.”
Some of Tornado Cash’s users included North Korea’s notorious state -sponsored hacking organization, the Lazarus Group, which used Tornado Cash to whitewash the yield of his 2022 Hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network. Mosley fortalte juryen, at Storm og hans ”co-konspiratorer”-med-udviklere Alexey Pertev og Roman Semenov-overtrådte amerikanske sanktioner mod Nordkorea ved at angiveligt lette Lazarus-gruppens hvidvaskning Mosley sagde, at Storm vidste, at Tornado Cash hjalp Nordkorea nederdel for amerikanske sanktioner, fordi han angiveligt smsede Semenov og Pertsev, “guys, we’re done for” after news about Axie Infinity Hack bread.
Storm’s lawyers, of course, see the facts of the case very differently. In his opening declarations to the jury, Keri Axel, a partner in Waymaker LLP, said Storm’s text to Pertsev and Semenov after Axie Infinity Hack had nothing to do with sanctions and everything to do with hack’s influence on Tornado Cash’s reputation, as well as the price of the Torn Token, which part of the wake of the hack. The washing machine T-shirt, she said, was a joke “in bad taste.”
Storm, said Axel, didn’t work with hackers or scammers and didn’t want them to use his product.
“These criminals who act without the help of Roman [Storm]abused Tornado cash, “said Axel.” You will not see any evidence that he communicated with them or helped them, absolutely none. “The fact that Tornado Cash was continuously exploited by bad actors” ultimately killed his dream “of creating a privacy tool adopted and respected throughout the crypto community, Axel said.
It is privacy – and the legitimate need and desire for it – that is at the heart of Storm’s defense. His lawyers told the jury that their client, a Kazakhstan-born US citizen who taught themselves to code while working odd jobs as a bus boy and a security guard before jumping to the tech industry, was inspired to create a privacy tool after meeting Ethereum-Medfifer Vitalik Butterin, as she described for jury as a “crypto rock star. “
While Axel admitted that Tornado Cash was “abused” by bad actors, she said they represented a minority of the tool’s users – most of those she said were normal people who used Tornado cash to preserve their privacy.
“It’s not a crime to do a useful thing that is abused by bad people,” Axel said, comparing Tornado cash with a smart phone used to scam people, or a hammer that used to break into homes.
She explained the jury that because blockchain is public and easily searchable, any known wallet address can be sought and its transactions (and the value of its content) can be seen by someone. Axel explained that loss of privacy in the crypto industry has led to the recent series of kidnappings and attacks on individuals and leaders with high net worth.
“How would you feel if someone took your bank account and published it on the Internet?” Axel asked the jury. “You would feel exposed and probably unsafe.”
Axel told the jury that they would hear testimony from a number of victims and hackers, none of whom could be directly associated with novel Storm. The hackers, she said, only testified “in the hope that they can get gentleness in their own criminal cases” and that the storm lacked the power to help their victims.
First witness
After opening statements, the government called its first witness, a Taiwan-born Georgia resident named Hanfeng Ling. Ms. Ling told the court how she was the victim of a pig that fought scams in the fall of 2021, which began with a Watch number with wrong number. The scammer convinced Ling to transfer nearly $ 200,000 from her savings account to buy crypto and then “invest” the crypto in a fake currency trading trading platform.
Mrs. Ling’s testimony continues Wednesday. Nathan Rehn, the leading prosecutor, told the court that he expects her testimony to be followed by four more government seasons on Wednesday.
Most of Storm’s trial is expected to take place over three weeks, followed by jury considerations.
