Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Will Not Take the Stand, Lawyers Say

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NEW YORK — Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer standing trial in Manhattan on expenses that the privateness instrument he created helped hackers and different cyber criminals launder greater than $1 billion in legal proceeds, gained't take the stand, his attorneys informed the courtroom on Tuesday.

Storm informed District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was conscious that he had the proper to testify in his personal protection however selected to not. After Storm made his choice, his protection group, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon.

Over three days of witness testimony, the protection argued that Storm was merely the developer of a respectable privateness instrument that was generally exploited by unhealthy actors – one thing which he and his co-founders may do little to really cease, as a result of the Tornado Cash protocol and its swimming pools have been immutable. While Storm and the different Tornado Cash co-founders made cash from the sale of TORN tokens, they didn’t revenue instantly from Tornado Cash, witnesses testified. And, although prosecutors tried to painting Storm and his co-founders as detached — even callous — to the plight of hack victims whose cash was laundered by way of Tornado Cash, witness testimony, group chats and messages confirmed that Storm and his co-founders have been sad with hackers utilizing their platform.

In messages between Storm and his co-founder, Roman Semenov (who additionally faces the similar expenses and stays at giant), Storm expressed concern in the wake of main hacks, together with the 2022 hack of Ronin Bridge, during which North Korean hackers stole $600 million and funneled a portion of the proceeds by way of Tornado Cash. In the chat, Storm and Semenov mentioned including the hackers’ pockets to the Tornado Cash person interface’s blocked record.

“We urgently need to tell everyone we do not want these individuals to the front,” Storm informed Semenov.

In one other string of messages following the Ronin Bridge hack, Storm informed Semenov that the hackers’ use of Tornado Cash was “very serious.”

After the 2022 hack of the Harmony Horizon Bridge, during which some proceeds flowed by way of Tornado Cash, Storm — messaging with Haseeb Qureshi, managing companion at crypto enterprise capital agency Dragonfly Capital that invested nearly $1 million in Tornado Cash guardian PepperSec Inc. — mentioned: “I’m glad those fuckers are detected.”

Value of privateness

Storm’s protection elicited witness testimony detailing non-criminal the explanation why somebody would possibly wish to use a instrument like Tornado Cash to separate their identification from their monetary transactions.

Dr. Matthew Green, famend cryptography professional and professor of pc science at Johns Hopkins University, informed the jury on Tuesday that the lack of privateness was a “bug” in the majority of cryptocurrencies, exposing customers to threats from hackers and different attackers.

Green — who provided his professional witness providers to Storm’s protection at no cost — defined that, and not using a instrument like Tornado Cash, Ethereum customers are exposing delicate private data with each transaction, together with how a lot cash they’ve, what they spend it on and who they affiliate with. This presents a spread of safety dangers, together with phishing makes an attempt, fraud and in-person “wrench attacks,” which Green defined have been “accelerating” in recent times.

Next steps

Whether the jury will aspect with the prosecution’s view of Tornado Cash or the protection’s has but to be determined.

Tomorrow, either side can have an opportunity to summarize their arguments in closing statements to the jury, after which the jury will probably be instructed by the choose on the expenses in opposition to Storm after which launched to deliberate.

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