Roman Storm, co -founder and programmer Tornado Cash, found interest in computer software at a teenage age after his parents bought him a personal computer.
Now, at the age of 36, he has a guilty verdict for running an unlicensed money transfer company, published by the jury on Wednesday. He remains in the abyss, because prosecutors could still bear him in two additional crimes: a conspiracy aimed at committing money and conspiracy to violate the US sanctions.
Storm has always been attracted to the “more technical side of things”, he he said At the beginning of July, just before the trial at the District Court in Recent York. He spent time playing video games and learning how computer programs and software work.
After connecting to the Internet, early interest expanded – giving it access to other countries and cultures. Over time, Storm attracts libertarian values that would ultimately lead to the creation of Tornado cash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwzodbdbiUw
From Russia to the United States
According to He studied metallurgical engineering at South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk in Russia in the years 2006–2008 to the LinkedIdin Storm profile. His actions included physics, mathematics and chemistry and the precursor of his later profession: programming. He was self -taught, learning from Open Source materials.
He was immigrate To the USA from Russia in 2008. At his party it was a challenging time. “You really don’t know how to do it,” he said during the podcast. “You just polish, hull, try to figure it out.”
At first he worked strange work. He was finally employed as a software engineer, and climbing took place quickly: his public resumption has roles in providing quality in Cisco and an older position at the start in the cloud. His last position in the corporate world was in Seattle, where he worked as a software engineer for Amazon for several months.
Related: Roman Storm asks $ 1.5 million of the lifeguard when Tornado Cash Trial presses
Cryptographic startups and the genesis of Tornado Cash
Until August 2017, Storm resigned with Amazon and started working as a blockchain developer. He focused on the Ethereum ecosystem, writing decentralized agreements on the reliability of the autonomous organization (DAO) for ERC-20 tokens.
Only three months later he became the director of POA Network technology, Siachina Ethereum, which is based on the mechanism of evidence. After almost a year, he founded Peppersec, a consulting agency for security audits and non -standard development.
During his stay in Peppersec, he came across a co -founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, who came across a burning issue of privacy in the ecosystem. It became an impulse for the prototype, which would later become Tornado’s cash.
“The Ethereum community needed privacy tool for many very justified reasons”, Storm he said Banklesss in an interview. “At the time when our team started working on it, several events took place.”
From code to court room
Storm was one of the three founders of Tornado Cash in 2019, a cryptocurrency mixer that allowed users to engage in implemented digital assets.
“Tornado Cash advertised to customers that it provided unrivable and anonymous financial transactions”, US Department of Justice he said In the statement in accordance with his guilty verdict, claiming that Storm was “personally aware” of the platform using criminals to transfer illegal proceedings with a total value of over $ 1 billion.
“Ultimately, Storm and its co -founders were able to pay over $ 12 million of profits from illegal money in the transmission of money,” said Dojat.
Storm was accused in August 2023 of allegations, including money laundering, conducting unlicensed activities of transferring money and a conspiracy aimed at violating us. Sanctions. He pleaded not guilty and was in favor of bail.
Over the past few months, he has changed his profile X to describe himself as “a proud United States citizen”, which was “the goal of Biden and SDDY administration for writing the Open Source code.”
Storm was convicted on Wednesday for conspiracy to run an unlicensed money transfer company, which has a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
The jury did not issue a judgment on other allegations related to money laundering and sanctions in North Korea, crimes that could be shortened to 40 years to the sentence of Storm if it is found guilty in the potential second trial.
According to legal experts, the US government still has the ability to re -resolve the storm. “The Department of Justice (Doj) will decide in the coming days if he wants to bear these allegations in the new trial,” Jake Chervinsky, legal director at Venture Capital Variant Fund, wrote on X.
The result of the Storm process is expected to determine the precedent for how American courts treat matters related to digital privacy and open source programmers.
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