Roman Storm, the co-founder and developer of Tornado Cash, will not face trial for money laundering and sanctions violation charges until April 2025. In a recent telephone conference on November 1st at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Katherine Polk Failla decided to postpone Storm’s trial until April 14, 2025. Storm’s legal team had been pushing to have the charges against him dismissed, arguing that they were solely based on his work in creating the code for the cryptocurrency mixing service.
Back in 2023, prosecutors had charged Storm and his fellow Tornado co-founder, Roman Semenov, with various crimes including conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The indictment sparked widespread outrage within the cryptocurrency industry.
The charges against Storm and Semenov came after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Tornado Cash to its Specially Designated Nationals list in August 2022. The government agency accused the mixer of failing to implement effective controls to prevent money laundering for malicious cyber actors.
As of now, Semenov remains outside of US custody and is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Storm, on the other hand, has been released on a $2 million bond since his arrest in 2023 and has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In a separate incident, authorities in the Netherlands arrested Tornado Cash co-founder Alexey Pertsev on money laundering charges in 2022. He was ultimately found guilty in May 2024 and sentenced to over five years in prison.