According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm will proceed to trial, as ruled by District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) during a telephonic hearing on Thursday. Judge Failla denied Storm's motion to dismiss the criminal charges against him, stating she had a lengthy order to read into the record to explain her reasoning. As of press time, she was addressing a motion to compel certain materials.
Storm, along with fellow Tornado Cash developer Roman Semenov, was indicted last August on three charges related to their work with the privacy mixer: conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Powers Act. Prosecutors have accused Tornado Cash and its developers of knowingly facilitating the laundering of over $1 billion, including hundreds of millions from North Korea's hacking organization, the Lazarus Group.
Storm has pleaded not guilty to all charges. In his motion to dismiss filed in March, Storm's lawyers argued that he merely wrote Tornado Cash's code and that any criminal activities that occurred subsequently were beyond his control. Judge Failla also denied another of Storm's pending motions, which sought to compel the DOJ to produce documents from Dutch authorities. These documents pertain to the recent conviction of another Tornado Cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, for money laundering. The judge ruled that Storm's team had not demonstrated the relevance of the material from Dutch authorities, calling their arguments too speculative.
Storm's trial is set to begin in New York on December 2 and is expected to last two weeks. If convicted on all three counts, he faces a maximum potential sentence of 45 years in prison.
