Roman Storm Arrested in Connection with Tornado Cash

According to The Wall Street Journal, federal agents arrested Roman Storm, a 35-year-old software developer, at gunpoint in August 2023 at his home in Auburn, Washington, as part of a criminal investigation tied to his involvement in Tornado Cash, a controversial crypto mixer that ran on Ethereum.

Roman is now heading to trial this July 14 in Manhattan, charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York with three criminal counts—conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to violate sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. He faces up to 45 years in prison.

The arrest came nearly nine months after Roman sat down voluntarily with federal investigators in New York in November 2022 to answer questions about Tornado Cash.

Prosecutors allege that Roman and his co-founders knowingly allowed criminals to funnel over $1 billion in stolen crypto through the platform, which masked the origin and destination of transactions.

One of those users, according to the Justice Department, was Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking crew already under U.S. sanctions.

Trump Allies Say Charges Wouldn’t Happen Under His Watch

Roman’s case started under the Biden administration, but it’s now being fought in a different political environment. Several of Roman’s supporters, including top players in the crypto industry, claim this prosecution wouldn’t be happening if Donald Trump had been president back then. They want Trump to shut the whole thing down.

Brian Klein, Roman’s attorney, told The Wall Street Journal, “We don’t think this case ever would have been brought now. This was brought when Biden had declared war on crypto.” The same U.S. Attorney’s Office behind Roman’s charges also filed the bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, which the Trump administration is now trying to dismiss.

Support from the crypto community has been loud. Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, said, “Roman is being unfairly prosecuted. Software developers shouldn’t be threatened with criminal sanctions for building neutral infrastructure, which is what Tornado Cash was. You wouldn’t throw Tim Cook in prison because criminals use iPhones.” Paradigm also paid $1.25 million for Roman’s legal defense and brought up the case at Trump’s White House crypto summit earlier this month.

Roman co-founded Tornado Cash with Roman Semenov and Alexey Pertsev. Semenov was also charged by the U.S., but he hasn’t been caught. Pertsev was arrested in the Netherlands in 2022 and was convicted of money laundering by a Dutch court in 2023. Tornado Cash isn’t the only crypto mixer prosecutors have targeted, but its structure was different. Unlike earlier mixers that had centralized operators, Tornado Cash functioned through autonomous smart contracts on Ethereum. Once it was deployed, Roman says, it couldn’t be turned off.

Prosecutors Say Roman Kept the Engine Running for Profit

Prosecutors don’t buy Roman’s claims that Tornado Cash ran on its own. In court filings, they said Roman and his co-founders didn’t just write code—they ran a website, maintained a relayer network, and made money from TORN tokens that were tied to the project. They described Tornado Cash as a business, not just software.

In September 2023, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla rejected Roman’s attempt to get the case thrown out. She stated, “The Tornado Cash enterprise was not an altruistic venture.” That means Roman is now heading into trial with all three charges still on the table.

Roman said most Tornado Cash users weren’t doing anything illegal. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said the tool provided people privacy in situations where they needed it. For example, Roman stated people used Tornado Cash to donate crypto to Ukrainian aid efforts without risking retaliation from Russian authorities.

However, prosecutors alleged he ignored signs that criminals were moving stolen funds through the tool. When crypto companies reached out asking him to stop specific transactions, they claimed Roman refused. He commented, “I gave my honest answer. Some people assumed that I had some sort of backdoor control or that I could freeze some funds and stop it somehow. But no, I don’t.” Roman expressed feeling “really bad” about those situations but stated he had no power to change the outcome.

Crypto’s Watching as Trial Date Nears and Pressure Mounts

Roman’s story didn’t begin in crypto. Born in Chelyabinsk, a Russian industrial city, he moved to the U.S. in 2008, became a U.S. citizen, and later worked at Cisco and Amazon before switching to blockchain development. Tornado Cash became one of the most well-known tools in the privacy corner of crypto. But the turning point came in March 2022, when hackers drained over $500 million from the game Axie Infinity and sent a significant chunk of that crypto through Tornado Cash.

Federal investigators said they traced that hack to Lazarus Group, and when Roman found out, he messaged his co-founders, “Guys, we are f—ed.” That message is now part of the evidence being used against him, with prosecutors arguing it shows he knew what was happening and didn’t act to stop it.

Roman’s arrest in August 2023 came long after he had cooperated with investigators in November 2022. He was released on bail shortly after his arrest and has remained in the same Auburn home where he was initially apprehended.

The U.S. government’s argument is straightforward: Roman helped create and maintain a tool used by criminals to conceal billions in illicit funds, and he failed to do enough to prevent it. However, crypto developers view this case as an assault on open-source coding, presenting a threat to building neutral, permissionless tools.

Despite the SEC under Trump easing off on crypto regulation lawsuits, the Justice Department continues to pursue individuals it claims are violating criminal laws. Roman’s trial represents a potential clash between these two forces.

As of September 2023, pressures escalated when the Treasury Department officially lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, which had initially been imposed by Biden’s Treasury but were overturned in November 2024 after a judge ruled they overstepped federal authority.

With the sanctions lifted, Trump potentially back in office, and the trial looming, Roman’s case garners significant attention within the crypto community. The outcome could influence the extent to which the U.S. holds coders accountable for the misuse of the tools they create.