Deniz 
Despite his plea to dismiss the case, a U.S. federal judge has decided that co-founder of Tornado Cash Roman Storm will be tried on claimed money laundering allegations.
Chief Legal Officer Amanda Tuminelli of the DeFi Education Fund reports that District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York refused Storm’s motion to dismiss three charges brought against him at a Sep. 26 teleconference conference. Federal prosecutors claimed in an indictment last August that Storm “knowingly facilitated” the laundering of over $1 billion in illegal proceeds out of the crypto mixer.
Along with a charge of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, Tornado Cash co-founder and co-founder Roman Semenov reportedly faced charges of one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to violate the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, each carrying a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.
Judge Failla declared the “functional capability” of code is not speech defined within the First Amendment, but Storm claimed his part in creating the Tornado Cash software was protected by his right. The district court also allegedly noted that the activities of the federal government against money laundering and evasion of sanctions are “wholly unrelated” to the repression of free speech.
Judge Failla also said she didn’t think Tornado Cash was “meaningly different” from other banking services or money-transmitting companies. “Judge Failla’s ruling denying Storm’s motion to dismiss the indictment is an assault on the freedom of software developers everywhere,” said Chief Legal Officer Jake Chervinsky of Variant Fund. “This will go down in history as a perversion of law and a travesty of justice.”
By hiding the source and destination of payments, cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash seeks to offer anonymity for crypto transactions. Lazarus, a cyberhacking group supported by North Korea, apparently used it for this aim. Starting on December 2 in New York, Storm’s trial is set to run two weeks. Russian national Semenov stays at large in the in the meantime.
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