Developer of Tornado Cash Roman Storm will face charges in the USA

The U.S. Department of Justice intends to file criminal charges against Roman Storm, the developer and co-founder of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. This was reported by Decrypt, citing a representative of the agency.

Federal prosecutors claim that Storm conspired with the aim of money laundering, evading U.S. sanctions, and conducting unlicensed money transfer business through Tornado Cash.

The trial is due to begin in less than two months. Recent court documents show that prosecutors agreed to drop the part of the charge related to running the money transmitter business without a license, acknowledging non-compliance with federal regulations.

In 2019, FinCEN clarified that "non-custodial organizations," such as Tornado Cash, are not classified as money transmitters.

"The provider of anonymizing software is not the sender of the money. The rules exclude from the definition those persons who only provide delivery, communication, or network access services used for transferring funds," the agency's guidelines state.

The investigation into Storm continues, despite a widely circulated internal memo last month regarding a change in the Justice Department's approach to handling cases related to cryptocurrency mixing services. It stated that the agency would focus on prosecuting individuals using crypto tools for criminal purposes rather than prosecuting the platforms themselves.

The co-founder of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, was sentenced in May 2022 to more than five years in prison for laundering $1.2 billion through a mixer, but was released in February 2025 under electronic monitoring while awaiting appeal.

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC in August 2022 due to its role in money laundering. According to U.S. authorities, since the service's inception, criminals have laundered over $7 billion through it. Tornado Cash was notably used by the North Korean group Lazarus.

On January 21, 2025, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States overturned sanctions due to "overreach" by OFAC and sent the case to the District Court for the Western District of Texas for further proceedings.

In March, the agency removed over 100 Ethereum addresses of the crypto mixer from the "blacklist."

At the end of April, a US federal court prohibited OFAC from renewing or imposing repeated sanctions against the Tornado Cash service.