The judge overseeing the US criminal trial of Tornado Cash co-founder and developer Roman Storm said she was “inclined” to disallow any mention of the 2022 sanctions against the cryptocurrency mixing service in court.
According to reporting from Inner City Press on Tuesday, Judge Katherine Failla of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York said she was unlikely to grant a motion prohibiting the mention of North Korea and the hackers in the Lazarus Group as part of prosecutors’ case against Storm. However, the judge reportedly said she was “inclined to keep out the August 2022 sanctions, since they were later withdrawn.”
The sanctions in question referred to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions adding addresses connected to Tornado Cash to its list of Specially Designated Nationals in 2022. However, after a federal judge ordered the repeal of sanctions as part of a civil case filed by Tornado Cash users, OFAC backtracked on the crypto mixer in March.
“The sanctions were withdrawn,” said Failla, according to Inner City Press. “So [Storm] has consciousness of guilt for something he was not ultimately guilty of.”
Storm was indicted in August 2023 for money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter and conspiracy to violate US sanctions. Failla is expected to issue rulings on which witnesses will be allowed to testify before Monday, when the Tornado Cash co-founder’s trial is scheduled to begin.
Related: Court ends Coin Center-US Treasury appeal over Tornado Cash
Will Storm be convicted and sentenced to prison?
The criminal case against Storm has prompted many high-profile figures in the crypto and blockchain industry to call for the charges to be dropped, echoing similar claims that “writing code is not a crime.”
The Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Paradigm founder Matt Huang have contributed thousands of dollars to the Tornado Cash co-founder’s legal fund ahead of his trial.
Assuming it moves ahead as scheduled, Storm’s criminal trial is likely to be one of the most significant legal events affecting the crypto industry following the conviction of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the sentencing of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky.
Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon also faces federal charges related to securities fraud, commodities fraud, market manipulation and money laundering after his extradition from Montenegro to the US.
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