Prosecution And Defense Tell Different Stores About Roman Storm

Today, during the second day of the Tornado Cash trial, the prosecution and defense provided opposing accounts in their opening statements for why the defendant in the case, Roman Storm, started Tornado Cash.

These statements were delivered after the jury selection process concluded.

The jury consists of seven women and five men; two members of the jury are in their 60s, four in their 40s, one in their 30s, and five in their 20s; and eight have undergraduate degrees, three have high school degrees and one has a master’s degree.

The members of the jury took the stand just after 2:00 p.m. EST, right before both the prosecution and defense delivered their opening statements.

The Opening Statement from the Prosecution

The prosecution delivered its opening statement first.

From the prosecution’s team, Mr. Mosley faced the jury and harped on the notion that Storm created Tornado Cash with the primary motivation of enriching himself — even if that meant doing so by helping to launder “dirty money.”

Mr. Mosley stated that hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto had been funneled through Tornado Cash, and that Storm and his co-conspirators, Roman Semenov and Alexey Pertsev, could have made Tornado Cash less attractive to criminals but chose not to.

He also cited how Tornado Cash facilitated sanctions violations, as North Korean hackers had used the service to launder crypto funds.

He implied that Storm was inherently guilty because he’d texted his co-founders in Tornado Cash “Guys, we’re done for” when the news surfaced that North Korean hackers used Tornado Cash to mix the funds stolen from the hack of online crypto game Axie Infinitiy as well as when Storm wore a T-shirt with a washing machine and a Tornado Cash logo on it to a crypto conference. (The defense, in its opening statement, admitted that Storm’s wearing such a T-shirt was done in “poor taste.”)

Mr. Mosley also stated that the evidence will show that Storm and his co-conspirators in Tornado Cash were intentionally running a crypto “washing machine” to help launder funds for bad actors and that it’s untrue the Storm and his co-conspirators were unable to make changes to the design of Tornado Cash once they learned that bad actors were using it, even though they claimed that they couldn’t.

“He chose to launder money time after time,” said Mr. Mosley of Storm.

Mr. Mosley added that Storm attempted to “hide his actions” by “cashing out” to the tune of millions of dollars using an account that wasn’t his own. (No details on whether this was a banking or crypto exchange account were provided.)

Finally, Mr. Mosley stated that the evidence in the case will include encrypted chats about the…