With his criminal process just a few weeks away, Tornado Cash, co-founder Roman Storm and denies the misconduct.
In a recent interview with Crypto in America, Storm said that the US government is prosecuting him for writing open-source code, not for actual criminal behavior.
Faced with three charges, including conspiracy to commit money and conspiracy to break the sanction legislation, federal justice officers claim that tornado -continuous money, founded in storms and two others, was used to make more than $ 1 billion of illegal funds in money laundering, including money L.
Storm consciously denies facilitating criminal activities. According to him, Tornado Cash was built to protect the privacy of the users, and once it was deployed, it worked autonomously and outside of his control.
“I had no contact with any criminals, criminal organizations, illegal actors or North Koreans,” he said, adding, “We had no control over what happened. If someone did something illegal, we couldn’t stop.”
“When Tornado -Content Money became fully decentralized and confidentless, there was not many activities at that time. We thought it would just be another project that would be in our car cemetery. We have as many projects as software. We did not expect. … pic.twitter.com/7fiurmkojn
– Roman storm 🇺🇸️ (@rstormsf) July 4, 2025
The co-founder was arrested in August 2023. His fellow developer, Alexey Ptsev, was sentenced last year for money laundering in the Netherlands and sentenced to 64 months in prison. The third co-founder of Tornado Cash, Roman Semenov, is also charged but remains in general.
Since his arrest, Storm says that he is under strict bail conditions and has been cut off from the financial system, without bank accounts, no access to crypto portfolios. “I am punished before I have been guilty,” he said.
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When asked about the broader use of the case, Storm warned that a conviction could harm developers and open-source innovation in the American crypto room.
“If I lose my case, Defi dies with me,” he said, with the argument that treating developers such as criminals creates a dangerously precedent.
The storm process starts on July 14 in the American court for the southern district of New York. Although the co-founder loved his defense strategy under wraps, such as whether he will testify, he stated that his team will claim that writing code is free speech and that creating open-source tools is not a crime, even if it is abused.
In the meantime, the support for storm has continued to grow. Industrial figures, including Ethereum-MEDE founder Vitalik Buterin, have publicly supported his defense and donated to his legal fund.
Read more: Ethereum Foundation donates $ 500K to the defense of Tornado Cash co-founder prior to the process
