A Manhattan federal jury is now seeing firsthand the crazy, emoji-ridden crypto scam as the trial of the Tornado Cash laundering case continues.
Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, is responsible for the crypto "mixing" service. He is charged with laundering more than $1 billion in dirty cash—money linked to North Korean hackers.
The last witness was Andre Marcus Quiddaoen Llacuna, a 23-year-old convicted NFT scammer, who testified as part of a government cooperation agreement. Llacuna gave an inside perspective on how Tornado Cash supposedly aided him and other actors to mask the source of stolen crypto.
NFT Rug Pull Funded Through Tornado Cash
Llacuna admitted to defrauding investors in a now-defunct NFT initiative named Frosties, selling 8,888 NFTs under pretenses of an impending game and breeding mechanics with a partner.
The tokens, priced at about $200–$300 per token, sold out fast, then the devs disappeared, wiping the project's website, Discord, and Twitter, leaving purchasers with zero.
According to Coindesk, he informed the jury that he laundered more than $1 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) from selling the Frosties through Tornado Cash, labeling it as the "best way to hide the money and get away with it." Asked how he "cleaned" the money, Llacuna replied matter-of-factly:
"By using Tornado Cash."
He even used the "washy washy" phrase at the time as part of his joke to his girlfriend.
Victims and Investigators Report Tornado Cash Ignored Red Flags
Prosecutors also introduced testimony from victims and investigators who tried to reclaim stolen money, only to be ignored or dismissed by Tornado Cash.
Hanfeng Lin, a Georgia court interpreter, described how she lost her $250,000 life savings to a crypto scheme. A private investigator tracked $150,000 of her money to Tornado Cash, but when she wrote hello@tornado.cash, she heard nothing.
In another case, crypto exchange BitMart's lawyer, Joseph B. Evans, testified that hackers made off with $196 million on the platform in 2021. Having tracked funds to Tornado Cash, Evans approached Storm in writing, asking for assistance in freezing the funds.
However, he was greeted with a dry reply, which only says that "Tornado Cash is a decentralized computer software program that no one can control." With that, the team cannot help him.
Roman Storm Faces 40+ Years If Convicted
Storm, who is running an unlicensed money transfer business and evading federal sanctions, has refuted that he didn't do anything wrong. His defense contends that Tornado Cash is merely open-source code that provides financial privacy, not a money-laundering service.
His attorney, Keri Curtis Axel, defended that Roman can't do anything to prevent bad actors because he just wrote the software.
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