Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York has reportedly denied the motion to dismiss the charges against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm.
Storm’s legal woes stem from allegations that Tornado Cash developers aided the North Korean hacking group Lazarus in laundering illegal funds through the crypto mixer.
In a bid to have the case dropped, Storm’s lawyers argued that the developer simply created an open-source protocol that provided privacy solutions for users of the Ethereum (ETH) network, which they say is not a crime.
But according to DeFi Education Fund chief legal officer Amanda Tuminelli, Failla is not persuaded by the argument.
“In the US v. Storm (Tornado Cash) hearing just now, the court rejected the arguments in Storm’s motion to dismiss as a matter of law and heavily punted what she said were factual issues for trial.”
According to Tuminelli, Judge Failla denied the motion to dismiss because the case is grounded on Storm’s “state of mind” and not on the fact that he wrote lines of code.
“Let me put this more simply – the government did not have to allege that Storm conspired with any user to promote or further illicit purposes. They did not have to allege he was aware of the specific nature of or be a participant in the underlying criminal activity. Instead, the government needs to prove that Storm knew he was dealing with the proceeds of some crime.
In the end, Storm’s arguments do not sound in Due Process but weigh in evidence of his state of mind, which is a matter for the jury.”
Crypto venture fund Variant chief legal officer Jake Chervinsky says that the ruling is “an assault on the freedom of software developers everywhere.”
“This will go down in history as a perversion of law and a travesty of justice.”
Storm will stand trial in December.
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