New York-Hay at least one fact that both the defense and the Prosecutor’s Office agree on the ongoing criminal money laundering trial of the Roman Storm software developer: the product that helped create and administer, a privacy tool Cryptography once popular called Tornado Cash, was exploited by computer pirates and cybernetic to wash their dirty money.
In what the parties do not agree, and the fundamental question in the heart of Storm’s judgment is whether Storm could prevent this behavior, if he knew what criminals were using the tornado cash protocol and how and, most importantly, if he should be considered criminally responsible for creating a tool that used to cover his clues.
Storm, 36, has been accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate the sanctions of the United States and conspiracy to operate a business without money transmission license, charges that, if the storm is convicted, entails a maximum combined sentence of 45 years in prison. His trial began in Manhattan on Monday, and the opening arguments took place on Tuesday afternoon after the lawyers selected a jury of 12 people to supervise the trial of three weeks.
Read more: jury sitting for tornado cash dev Roman storm’s trial
During the government’s opening statements, prosecutor Kevin Mosley told the jury that Roman Storm “knew that his business was washing dirty money” and that he earned millions of dollars doing it. Mosley said the jury would see a photo of Storm with a shirt with a photo of a washing machine with the Cash Tornado logo, evidence that he allegedly knew exactly why Cash tornado was being used.
Storm, Mosley said, turned the computer to the computer pirates using their platform and ignored the pleas of the victims of scams who approached him, asking for help to recover his money. Although prosecutors claim that Storm told victims that he could not help them or ignore them completely, Mosley said Storm maintained total control over the cash tornado platform, even adjusting it “to be even better for criminals to hide their money.”
Some of the Cash Tornado users included the infamous organization of piracy sponsored by the state of North Korea, The Lazarus Group, which used Cash Tornado to wash the income of his 2022 trick of the Ronin Network of Axie Infinity. Mosley told the jury that, by facilitating the money laundering of the Lázaro, Storm group and their “conspirators”, the fellow developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov, violated the sanctions of the United States against North Korea. Mosley said that Storm knew that Tornado Cash was helping North Korea to transfer the sanctions of the United States because he supposedly sent a text message to the Senov and Pertsev: “Boys, we have finished” after the news of Axie Infinity’s hack was broken.
Storm’s lawyers, of course, see the facts of the case in a very different way. In his initial statements to the jury, Keri Axel, a Waymaker LLP partner, said that Storm’s text to Pertsev and Semenov after the Axie Infinity Hack had nothing to do with the sanctions, and everything that has to do with the impact of hack on the reputation of Tornado Cash, just like the price of the top torrent, which suffered at the Holk station. The washing machine’s shirt, he said, was a “bad taste” joke.
Storm, said Axel, did not work with computer pirates or scammers, and did not want them to use their product.
“These criminals, acting without any help from Roman [Storm]Misused cash of tornado, “Axel said.” He will not see any evidence that he communicated with them or helped them, absolutely none. “
It is privacy, and the legitimate need and the desire for it, which is located in the center of the defense of Storm. His lawyers told the jury that his client, an American citizen born in Kazakhstan who taught to encode while working in strange jobs as a bus child and a security guard before jumping to the technology industry, was inspired to create a privacy tool after meeting the co -founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Bugerin, whom she described the jury as a “Crypto Rockstar.”
While Axel admitted that Tornado Cash was “misused” by the bad actors, said they represented a minority of the tool users, most of whom, according to her, were normal people who used tornado cash to preserve their privacy.
“It is not a crime to do something useful that bad people use badly,” Axel said, comparing tornado cash with a smartphone used to cheat people, or a hammer used to enter homes.
She explained to the jury that, because the block chain is public and easy to search, you can search in any known wallet direction and its transactions (and the value of its content) It can be seen by anyone. Axel explained that, in the cryptographic industry, the loss of privacy has led to the recent series of kidnappings and attacks against individuals and high -level executives.
“How would you feel if someone would take your bank account and have published it on the Internet?” Axel asked the jury. “You would feel exposed and probably insecure.”
Axel told the jury that they would listen to the testimony of a large number of victims and computer pirates, none of which could be directly connected to the Roman storm. The hackers, he said, only testified “hoping that they can obtain clemency in their own criminal cases” and that storm lacked power to help their victims.
First witness
After the opening concluded the statements, the government called its first witness, a resident of Georgia, born in Taiwan, called Hanfeng Ling. Mrs. Ling told the Court how she was a victim of a pork butcher shop in the fall of 2021, which began with a WhatsApp message of erroneous number. The scammer convinced Ling to transfer almost $ 200,000 of his savings account to buy cryptography and then “invest” cryptography on a false currency trade platform.
The testimony of Mrs. Ling will continue on Wednesday. Nathan Rehn, the main prosecutor, told the court that he hopes that his testimony will be followed by four more witnesses of the government on Wednesday.
Most of the Storm trial is expected to take place for three weeks, followed by jury’s deliberation.
