<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against two individuals who co-founded Tornado Cash on Aug. 23<\/a>.<\/p>\n The agency unsealed an indictment charging Roman Storm and Roman Semenov with various wrongdoings related to creating, operating, and promoting Tornado Cash<\/a> \u2014 a once-popular Ethereum<\/a>-based coin mixer that obscured crypto transactions.<\/p>\n U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:<\/p>\n \u201cWhile publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service, Storm and Semenov in fact knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The DOJ further noted that Tornado Cash handled $1 billion in criminal proceeds and laundered funds on behalf of North Korean cybercrime groups.<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s complete list of charges against the two Tornado Cash co-founders includes conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.<\/p>\n The DOJ said that Storm has been arrested in Washington State and will be presented in court, while Semenov has not yet been located or arrested.<\/p>\n The U.S. Treasury separately announced sanctions<\/a> against Semenov, an action that will prohibit other parties from transacting with him. The agency noted that those who transact with Semenov may be designated themselves.<\/p>\n A third developer, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested in the Netherlands<\/a> in August 2022. The DOJ did not announce charges against Pertsev today. Treasury mentioned Pertsev\u2019s past arrest but did not announce sanctions against him (or against Storm).<\/p>\n The Treasury initially imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash in August 2022, effectively banning mainstream access to the coin mixer.<\/p>\n However, Tornado Cash continued to operate due to its decentralized nature and reliance on cryptocurrency. The platform has even survived other trials: Tornado Cash\u2019s governance system was notably hacked in May 2023, leading to a theft of less than $1 million. Governance coin holders later regained control through a new proposal.<\/p>\n Data from DefiLlama<\/a> suggests that Tornado Cash remains active with $245 million in total value locked (TVL), down from its all-time high TVL of $1.1 billion.<\/p>\n The post Tornado Cash co-founders charged by DOJ; one sanctioned by U.S. Treasury while the other arrested by FBI<\/a> appeared first on CryptoSlate<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against two individuals who co-founded Tornado Cash on Aug. 23. The agency unsealed an indictment charging Roman Storm and Roman Semenov with various wrongdoings related to creating, operating, and promoting Tornado Cash \u2014 a once-popular Ethereum-based coin mixer that obscured crypto transactions. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-141404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141406,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141404\/revisions\/141406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Treasury previously sanctioned mixer<\/h2>\n