Tornado Cash Dev Roman Storm Set For Trial As Court Rejects Motion To Dismiss
The post Tornado Cash Dev Roman Storm Set For Trial As Court Rejects Motion To Dismiss appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
In a significant legal case, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm will now face a legal trial after the US court rejected a motion to dismiss several charges filed against the defendant by the US Department of Justice. This development comes a year after the DOJ announced an indictment against Storm and fellow Tornado Cash developer Roman Semenov. Tornado Cash Developer Fails To Convince US Judge According to US authorities, Storm and Semenov are two of three persons who created, promoted, and operated Tornado Cash, a digital platform that has facilitated over $1 billion in money laundering profit for several criminals including prominent syndicates such as the Lazarus Group. For context, Tornado Cash is a popular decentralized cryptocurrency protocol that mixes multiple assets to obscure the transaction trail of these funds. It has been previously employed by hackers in siphoning ill-gotten gains. In response to the charges against him, Roman Storm filed a motion to dismiss claiming an infringement of his First Amendment rights among other arguments. In a telephonic conference on September 26, US Judge Katherin Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York struck out Storm’s request meaning the blockchain developer will be subject to a full-scale legal trial. According to Chief Legal Officer at DeFi Education Fund, Amanda Tuminelli, Judge Failla explains that, in contrast to previous arguments made by the defendant’s lawyers, maintaining control of the transactions on Tornado Cash is not a requirement to run a money-transmitting business according to Section 1960 of the US Constitution. The US Judge described Tornado Cash as not dissimilar from other money-transmitting businesses. Furthermore, Failla states that Storm’s defense which backs the creation of Tornado Cash as a form of free speech via coding is fallible as the “functional capability” of code as a speech is not stated under…
Filed under: News - @ September 29, 2024 4:41 am