In brief
- Storm was convicted Wednesday on conspiracy to operate unlicensed money transmitter, butthe jury deadlocked on money laundering and sanctions charges
- Legal aid group warns Storm faces “potentially decades” if prosecutors retry the two unresolved counts.
- Samourai Wallet founders this week pleaded guilty to similar charges, highlighting government’s crackdown on privacy tools.
The Ethereum Foundation announced Thursday it will match up to another $500,000 in donations for Roman Storm’s legal defense, just days after the Tornado Cash co-founder was convicted on one of three federal charges that experts say could criminalize code development.
“Privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime,” Wei Wang, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, tweeted.
The matching pledge comes as a Manhattan jury on Wednesday found Storm guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitter but remained deadlocked on separate conspiracy charges for money laundering and sanctions evasion after four days of deliberation.
The Free Pertsev & Storm legal aid organization tweeted the urgency of continued funding, saying that Storm “risks up to 5 years of jail time if he doesn’t win the appeal, and potentially decades if the government decides to retry Counts 1 & 3.”
The group noted that the outcome “will set a major precedent for developers worldwide.”
Storm’s legal troubles stem from his role in developing Tornado Cash, a coin mixer that allows users to obscure crypto transactions by pooling funds with others.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the protocol in August 2022, claiming $7 billion had been laundered through it since 2019, including frequent use by North Korea’s Lazarus Group hackers.
Federal prosecutors portrayed Storm as someone who profited from “hiding dirty money for criminals,” while his defense said that Tornado Cash was designed as a privacy tool for ordinary users, not specifically for illicit activities.
HashKey Group Chief Analyst Jeffrey Ding told Decrypt that the verdict “underscores the unprecedented legal territory for open-source privacy software” and represents “a troubling precedent” where authorities are “willing to test the limits of applying financial crime statutes to code developers.”
Crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky called the verdict “a sad day for DeFi” on Thursday, adding that “Section 1960 should not apply to the developer of a non-custodial protocol who lacks control of user funds.”
He urged the case to proceed on appeal, hoping “the Second Circuit will correct this (and many other) errors.”
In July, Storm made an urgent plea for an additional $1.5 million, explaining that legal costs had been “piling up fast” as his team worked “around the clock” during the three-week trial.
Just this week, the founders of Bitcoin mixer Samourai Wallet—William Lonergan Hill and Keonne Rodriguez—pleaded guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter, facing up to five years in prison.
Prosecutors allege the wallet laundered over $100 million, calling it a “haven for large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion.”
Their sentencing is scheduled for November 6.
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