Roman Storm, co-developer of the Tornado Cash protocol, has appealed for an additional $1.5 million to offset the escalating legal expenses as his significant crypto trial enters its third week. The plea for additional funds came in a July 26 post, in which Storm outlined the rapidly accruing legal costs.
“It might seem absurd, but I require approximately another $1.5 million,” Storm stated in his post, pointing out his legal team has been working tirelessly. “We’ve lost track of what normal sleep is. Every minute is crucial, and so are the expenses,” he added.
The crypto community has previously donated over $3.9 million to cover Storm’s legal fees for the trial, which began on July 14 in Manhattan, New York. This trial could set a precedent for criminalizing open-source privacy tools, potentially stifling decentralized finance innovation and significantly curtailing privacy rights.
However, crypto privacy tools like Tornado Cash have been scrutinized due to their misuse by illegal entities, including the North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group. This led the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction the protocol in August 2022. These sanctions were eventually revoked in January after Tornado Cash users initiated a civil lawsuit against OFAC. The crypto mixing protocol was officially delisted from OFAC’s blacklist in March.
Storm’s website reveals that over $3.2 million has been raised for his Legal Defense Fund, reaching 65% of a new $5 million target. The Ethereum Foundation has also accomplished its $750,000 goal to aid Storm’s legal defense.
The Southern District of New York trial is projected to wrap up in about two weeks, around August 11. US prosecutors insist that Storm conspired to launder money, violated US sanctions, and ran an unlicensed money-transmitting business via his involvement in Tornado Cash. Storm’s legal team counters that Tornado Cash was never a business but a decentralized and immutable protocol beyond their control.
Storm, along with Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov, developed Tornado Cash in 2019, motivated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to investigate crypto privacy tools. Pertsev was convicted of money laundering in the Netherlands in May 2024 and is currently appealing the decision, while Semenov remains elusive and features on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s wanted list.
