Tornado Cash Founder Indicted in $1.2B Money Laundering

Tornado Cash founder faces indictment for allegedly laundering up to $1.2B in crypto with prosecutors linking him to 36 transactions.

Alexey Pertsev, the creator of the popular Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer, faces indictment proceedings due to allegations of laundering cryptocurrency assets valued up to $1.2 billion.

A growing number of people are turning to the Tornado Cash developer for cryptocurrency-related criminal activity rather than the service his company intends to provide.

Tornado Cash Founder Indicted for 36 Illicit Crimes

Dutch prosecutors have pursued his pursuit in connection with several investigations that reportedly involved 36 suspicious transactions.

Among the submitted cases, the Axie Infinity-linked crypto protocol Ronin Bridge yielded the largest amount of ETH—175 ETH. The Netherlands’ list of prosecutors included decentralized protocols like Harmony and Nomad Bridge in other illegal transactions.

Following the statements made by Keith Cheng, the attorney for the tornado Cash founder, “Prosecutors are suspecting the tornado Cash founder of money laundering, and they have described it in a general way, however, they do not specify which specific acts he has committed to take part in the criminal offense.”

In the meantime, the governments of the Netherlands have made it abundantly evident that the Tornado Cash founder has made it a practice to engage in activities that include money laundering.

The Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) of the Netherlands detained Pertsev in August 2022 for allegedly laundering $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency, suggesting that this assertion may have some basis.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Treasury Department sanctioned the cryptocurrency mixer before Pertsev’s arrest for cleaning filthy money totaling several billions of dollars.

A well-known North Korean hacker gang known as Lazarus is one of the organizations suspected of using Tornado Cash at some point. At the time, authorities took the Tornado Cash developer into custody, but they eventually released him after granting him bail.

The FBI retook him into custody in August of the previous year to prosecute him for money laundering. The FBI orchestrated the arrest this time.

ZachXBT, a digital investigator specializing in cryptocurrency, claimed to have been monitoring a suspicious wallet with a connection to Tornado Cash since the beginning of 2023.

Since his original arrest in 2022, Pertsev has steadfastly denied any involvement in money laundering or a violation of money laundering securities claims.

This is the case in the trial that is currently taking place. The trial of Pertsev is slated to start on March 26 in the city of Hertogenbosch, which is located in the Netherlands.