Tornado Cash Developer Sentenced To Over 5 Years In Prison For Money Laundering

A Dutch court has sentenced Alexey Pertsev, the developer of cryptocurrency mixing tool Tornado Cash, to 64 months in jail after a panel of judges found him guilty of money laundering.

"The district court of Oost-Brabant has sentenced a 31 year old Russian, residing in Amstelveen, to an imprisonment of 5 years and 4 months. The court ruled that the man developed and maintained a software tool, called Tornado Cash, with which in total over 2 billion U.S. dollars was laundered," the court said in a statement Tuesday.

The statement revealed that some $1.2 billion in Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, was laundered through Tornado Cash. The laundered ETH tokens were allegedly pilfered from a total of 36 different hacking incidents, as per the court statement.

The statement also noted that the court "disagrees" with Pertsev's reiteration that he did not intend to break laws or facilitate criminal activities through the crypto mixer that he developed. The developer has repeatedly argued that Tornado Cash cannot be under anyone's control, as it was software that was running on Ethereum.

"It was Tornado Cash that executed the concealing and disguising activities, previously described. When executing these activities with cryptocurrency derived from crime, Tornado Cash carries out money laundering activities. Therefore the court judges that Tornado Cash is not just a[n] instrument for users," the court said.

As per the court statement, the judges found that Pertsev was active in several chat groups that discussed the hacking events wherein the stolen Ether tokens were derived. For the judges, Pertsev "created a shortcut for financing crimes and terrorism," considering how the mixing tool was designed to facilitate transactions without asking the necessary questions from users.

Pertsev was arrested and jailed in the Netherlands in August 2022 following Tornado Cash's blacklisting in the United States. The U.S. government said at the time that the crypto-mixing tool assisted hackers, even some linked to North Korea, to launder their cybercrime proceeds.

Meanwhile, Roman Storm, the mixer's co-founder, filed earlier this year to dismiss a criminal indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over sanctions violations and federal money laundering. The indictment accused Storm and Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov of knowing that the mixer was being used by notorious North Korean hacking group Lazarus to launder criminal proceeds.

Storm's lawyers said the U.S. government "wrongfully concluded" that their client was guilty of criminal conspiracy since he only developed a software and did not enter into an agreement with bad actors to launder money.