Security News > 2023 > August > Tornado Cash 'laundered over $1B' in criminal crypto-coins

Two founders of Tornado Cash were formally accused by US prosecutors today of laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds through their cryptocurrency mixer.

As a cryptocurrency mixer, Tornado Cash is appealing to cybercriminals as it offers to provide them a degree of anonymity.

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by Uncle Sam a little over a year ago for helping North Korea's Lazarus Group scrub funds stolen in the Axie Infinity hack.

In the unsealed indictment [PDF], prosecutors said Tornado Cash boasted about its anonymizing features and that it could make money untraceable, and that Storm and Semenov refused to implement changes that would dial back Tornado's thief-friendly money-laundering capabilities and bring it in line with financial regulations.

Clues point to CC-1 potentially being Alexey Persev, a Russian software developer linked to Tornado Cash who was arrested in The Netherlands shortly after the US sanctioned the crypto-mixing site.

His defenders argued he shouldn't be held accountable for writing Tornado Cash code since he didn't do any of the alleged money laundering himself.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/08/23/tornado_cash_founders_indicted/