Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm is set to stand trial on Monday in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) on federal charges that could put him behind bars for more than 40 years.
Prosecutors allege he conspired to launder money, violated US sanctions and operated an unlicensed money-transmitting business stemming from his role in creating Tornado Cash, an open-source protocol that allows users to conceal blockchain transactions — whether for privacy or to obscure illicit activity.
At the heart of Storm’s defense is the argument that Tornado Cash is not a business but a decentralized and immutable protocol that he no longer controlled. Also, code is considered protected speech under the First Amendment in the US.
The trial ultimately hinges on whether Storm’s actions amounted to protected speech or crossed into criminal conduct.
Here are the key facts to understand before Storm faces the court.
Why is Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm on trial?
Storm moved to the US from Russia in 2008 and later became a US citizen. In a recent interview with “Crypto In America,” he said the freedoms granted to individuals in the US deeply resonated with him and were a key motivator for his move.
While working as a software engineer in San Francisco in 2014, he discovered Bitcoin and was “blown away” by the idea of transacting freely with others on a decentralized network.
In 2019, Storm attended a conference representing his consulting firm, PepperSec. He met Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who encouraged him to explore privacy in blockchain applications. That conversation eventually led to Storm co-creating Tornado Cash with Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov.
Pertsev was found guilty of money laundering in the Netherlands and is currently appealing the decision. Semenov remains at large and is on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s wanted list.
Launched in 2019, Tornado Cash is a tool designed to obscure blockchain transaction histories. When a user deposits crypto into the protocol, it generates a secret code that allows them to later withdraw the same amount to a different wallet address. Because deposits and withdrawals are recorded as separate transactions, they are more difficult to trace than typical blockchain transactions.
It quickly attracted illicit users, including North Korean hackers, prompting the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to impose sanctions on the protocol in 2022. However, in March 2025, those sanctions were reversed following a civil challenge in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury, brought by Tornado Cash users.
Judge Katherine Failla, who is presiding over Storm’s case, recently said she was “inclined” to exclude the 2022 sanctions from the trial.
Related: From Sony to Bybit: How Lazarus Group became crypto’s supervillain
Failla has previously overseen major cryptocurrency cases, including the dismissal of a class-action lawsuit against decentralized exchange Uniswap and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) now-dropped lawsuit against Coinbase.
Tornado Cash’s decentralization is central to the defense
Storm is being prosecuted by a team experienced in crypto crime: Thane Rehn and Benjamin Gianforti, assistant US attorneys in the SDNY. Gianforti secured convictions in the IcomTech and Forcount crypto Ponzi cases. Rehn was the prosecutor against FTX.
In Storm’s corner, he is represented by a legal team led by Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP and David Patton of Hecker Fink LLP. Klein is a white-collar defense attorney known for high-profile crypto cases, including his work defending Mango Markets exploiter Avi Eisenberg and crypto exchange Kraken. Patton, a federal trial lawyer, has represented major crypto figures such as Terraform Labs co-founder Kwon Do-hyung, better known as Do Kwon.
The defense argues that their client can’t be held responsible for how Tornado Cash was used because the protocol is decentralized and beyond his control. In May 2020, Tornado Cash developers began relinquishing control and moved toward a fully decentralized system.
According to the defense, Storm merely wrote and published open-source code. He didn’t run a business, offer a service or manage customers. They cite a 2019 Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance that said developers of anonymizing software were not required to register as money transmitters.
That argument has gained traction in related cases. In Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury, the Fifth Circuit ruled that Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts were not “property” subject to US sanctions.
In Storm’s own case, firms like Paradigm have filed amicus briefs…
cointelegraph.com