Dutch court finds Tornado Cash developer guilty of laundering $1.2 bln.
A panel of judges in the Dutch city of Hertogenbosch found the creator of Tornado Cash Alexey Pertsev guilty of laundering $1.2 billion. The Russian citizen was sentenced to five years and four months in prison. The defense lawyers have two weeks to file an appeal.
Alexey Pertsev is charged with conducting at least 36 illegal transactions between July 2019 and August 2022. One of them has to do with the hacking of the Ronin blockchain bridge game Axie Infinity in 2022. The hackers then stole $600 million in cryptocurrency as a result of the attack. The indictment includes a 175 $ETH transfer that went through Tornado Cash.
Prosecutor Martine Boerlage of the Dutch National Office for Financial Fraud and Asset Forfeiture said the defendant did not take sufficient measures to prevent attackers from using the mixer.
"Tornado Cash by its nature and functioning is a tool designed for criminals. Under the pretext of ideology, you did not care about the laws and rules that apply to everyone, feeling untouchable," declared one of the judges
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The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash on August 10, 2022. Alexey Pertsev, who lives in the suburbs of Amsterdam, was arrested a few days later. As a result, customer funds, Tornado Cash source code were blocked, and US tax residents were banned from using the mixer.
