Bombshell in Tornado Cash Case: DOJ Drops Key Charges Against Co-Founder!

Storm's Legal Battle Heats Up as Trial Looms

Hang onto your hats, crypto fans! In a shocking twist, the U.S. Department of Justice just yanked a major chunk of the criminal case against Roman Storm, the mastermind behind the notorious crypto mixer Tornado Cash. This bombshell drops just weeks before Storm's trial, set to ignite on July 14th!

On May 15th, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton dropped a bombshell letter on Judge Katherine Polk Failla's desk down in the Southern District of New York. The government's pulling the plug on part of the charge that had Storm sweating over operating an unlicensed money transmitting biz.

Get this: prosecutors are waving the white flag on Title 18 U.S. Code § 1960(b)(1)(B) – that's the juicy bit in Count Two accusing Storm of dodging registration rules for money transmitters. But hold up, the DOJ ain't backing down completely. They're still gunning for Storm on charges of conspiring to launder cash, plotting against the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and scheming to move dirty money under what's left of Count Two.

Clayton's letter pulls no punches:

“After diving deep into this case, our office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General reckon this prosecution jives with the letter and spirit of the April 7, 2025 memo from the Deputy Attorney General.”

That memo, penned by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, told the DOJ to cut it out with the "regulation by prosecution" game in crypto cases. It's a wake-up call, urging the agency to stop slapping cuffs on folks for technical rule-breaking – like not registering – especially when the devs aren't directly pulling the strings on user antics.

Storm got thrown in the ring alongside his partner-in-crime, Roman Semenov, back in 2023. They're accused of playing nice with bad actors, including North Korea's Lazarus Group, helping them wash dirty money through Tornado Cash. This crypto mixer's like a cloak of invisibility for blockchain transactions, making it a nightmare to track down stolen or sanctioned dough. It's all about pooling users' crypto and shuffling it to new addresses, snapping the chain between who's sending and who's receiving.

Storm's not going down without a fight. He's pleaded not guilty and tried to shake off some charges, claiming they're trampling all over his First Amendment rights. His trial's been delayed before, but this summer, it's showtime.

Don't forget about the third musketeer, Alexey Pertsev. He got nabbed in the Netherlands in 2022 for allegedly greasing the wheels for money laundering through Tornado Cash. Last May, a Dutch court slapped him with a guilty verdict and sentenced him to over five years behind bars. But in February this year, he got a temporary breather under electronic surveillance to prep his appeal.

This case isn't just about one man's fight. It's sparking a wildfire debate over whether devs should be on the hook and where to draw the line with open-source software in the wild world of crypto.