Civics: A Crypto Coder’s Invention Was Used by North Korean Hackers. Did He Commit a Crime?
Early one morning in August 2023, federal agents swept into Roman Storm’s home in a wooded suburb of Seattle to arrest him at gunpoint.
The 35-year-old software developer is set to go on trial this summer in a case that cryptocurrency advocates consider a key test for the legal treatment of blockchain technology. The crypto industry has rallied behind Storm, and some of his allies have called for President Trump to intervene and drop the prosecution, which began during the Biden administration.
Storm and two other developers co-founded Tornado Cash, a “mixer” used to obfuscate the movement of digital funds. He says its goal was to enable financial privacy—for instance, allowing people to donate crypto to assist war-torn Ukraine without drawing the attention of Russian authorities.
It also enabled more sinister activity. The Justice Department has alleged that criminals, including Lazarus Group, a U.S.-sanctioned North Korean cybercrime organization, used Tornado Cash to launder more than $1 billion of illicit assets. According to prosecutors, Storm and his co-founders made millions of dollars from Tornado Cash and knew that hackers used it to launder stolen assets.
