New York – Cash Tornado Roman Storm developer has been convicted of conspiring to operate a money transmission business without license, a jury of Manhattan decided Wednesday.
The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the remaining positions, the conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate international sanctions, despite four days of deliberations after the three -week trial. A sentence date has not yet been established, and it is currently not clear if prosecutors will choose to trust the storm again in the remaining positions. Prosecutors told court on Wednesday afternoon that they will consult internally and decide.
Storm was arrested in 2023 and accused of helping computer pirates and other cybercriminals, including the famous piracy team of North Korea, Lazarus group, washing more than $ 1 billion in dirty money through Tornado cash, the cryptographic privacy tool that helped develop.
After the jury read the verdict, the prosecutors moved to Storm, who is currently on bail, to be sent to prison to wait for the sentence, arguing that “he is from Russia” (Storm was born in Kazakhstan and is an American citizen who has lived in Seattle, Washington for a decade), “he advised the people how to deceive the people of Immigration “and is the financial system of financial media to float the country, according to the presentation of Intersner.
Storm’s lawyers retreated, arguing that the developer is not a flight risk. Keri Axel, a Waymaker partner and Storm’s lawyer, told the Katherine Polke Failla district judge, from the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that Storm delivered his passport and has deep family ties, including the joint custody of a five -year -old daughter in the state of Washington, where he lives and extended the family in Sacramento, California, California.
Failla finally put on the side of Storm’s lawyers, arguing that he did not believe that Storm was a flight risk since he was only convicted of a position.
“You can appeal, you have all the incentives to stay and fight,” Failla said. “It is not a flight risk, given the size of the link. There are many fighting in this case before the sentence, and I think Mr. Storm will stay for it.”
The verdict in the case of Storm occurs only one week after the developers of Samourai Wallet, a privacy tool centered in bitcoins similar to the tornado cash, declared himself guilty of a conspiracy charge to operate a business transmission business without a license. The developers, Keonne RodrÃguez and William Lonergan Hill, changed their initial “non -guilty” statements after reaching an agreement with prosecutors who saw that the stronger conspiracy charges that wash the conspiracy decreased.
