Tornado Cash Founders Charged with Laundering over $1B

Two founders of Tornado Cash, the widely known Russian cryptocurrency mixer, have been charged with laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds.

In a newly unsealed indictment, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have both been accused of sanctions violations and laundering money through Tornado Cash, including hundreds of millions of dollars for the Lazarus Group, a sanctioned North Korean state-backed hacking group.

Charges in the indictment include conspiring to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.   

Storm was arrested Wednesday in Washington state, according to a statement from the Justice Department, but Semenov, a Russian national, remains at large.

The third co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, who is not mentioned in this action, faces trial in Amsterdam over his involvement with Tornado Cash.

"Roman Storm and Roman Semenov allegedly operated Tornado Cash and knowingly facilitated this money laundering," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, adding, "While 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."

The indictment also alleged that Storm and Semenov chose not to implement know your customer or anti-money laundering programs as required by law, and instead, advertised that the tumbler "provided untraceable and anonymous financial transactions."

(Source: CNBC)