The Tornado Cash Trial Begins: Roman Storm Faces Charges Over $1 Billion in Crypto Laundering

On July 14, 2025, Roman Storm, the co-founder of Tornado Cash, stood trial in Manhattan, facing federal charges linked to over $1 billion in allegedly illicit cryptocurrency transactions. The four-week trial, taking place in the Southern District of New York, could result in up to 45 years in prison if Storm is convicted.

The high-profile case tests the boundaries of financial privacy in DeFi, drawing intense attention from both regulators and the crypto community. Judge Katherine Polk Failla barred all references to the U.S. Treasury’s former sanctions on Tornado Cash, stating that such context might unfairly influence jurors.

Charges Against Storm

The U.S. Department of Justice has brought three main charges against Storm, citing his alleged role in enabling illicit activity through Tornado Cash, including transactions involving North Korea’s Lazarus Group. The charges include:

• Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering: Prosecutors allege that Storm facilitated the laundering of more than $1 billion in crypto assets, including hundreds of millions tied to Lazarus Group.

• Sanctions Violations: Storm is accused of failing to comply with U.S. sanctions laws, particularly by allowing transactions involving sanctioned entities.

• Operating an Unlicensed Money-Transmitting Business: While this charge was partially dropped in April 2025, prosecutors maintain that Storm’s operations lacked basic anti-money laundering (AML) controls.

Code as Free Speech?

Storm’s defense centers on a core crypto ethos: that code is speech. His lawyers argue that he merely published open-source software to promote financial privacy, and that the decentralized nature of Tornado Cash meant he had no control over its usage after deployment.

This defense has garnered significant support from the crypto community. Mark Bini, partner at Reed Smith’s global regulatory and enforcement practice, said:

“There’s certainly going to be a very vigorous defense here that they were writing code and that [Tornado Cash] was designed for privacy — that some people may have taken advantage of it, but [Storm and his colleagues] weren’t co-conspirators. Mixers have been very controversial because they’ve been used by lots of people doing bad things, no doubt about it, but the idea that some people would want to use them for privacy, that’s a legitimate argument as well. That’s going to make for a fierce battle here.”

In a major win for Storm’s defense, a March 2025 appellate court ruling overturned the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions against Tornado Cash, bolstering arguments that the platform should not be treated as a centralized actor.

Broader Implications

With a more crypto-friendly White House under the Trump administration, some legal experts see the trial as a lingering battle from previous regulatory crackdowns.

“This really is a vestige of the Biden administration’s war on crypto,” said Jake Chervinsky, chief legal officer at Variant.

The verdict, expected in August, could set a precedent for how U.S. courts interpret developer liability, open-source code, and user autonomy in decentralized systems—issues that go far beyond Tornado Cash itself.