Tornado Cash Dev Found Guilty of Money Laundering

Alexey Pertsev, the developer behind the cryptocurrency mixing protocol Tornado Cash, has been convicted of money laundering, a verdict that may have significant repercussions for open-source code developers.

On May 14, Dutch judges at the ‘s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal found Pertsev guilty of money laundering.

He was sentenced to five years and four months in prison for allegedly laundering $1.2 billion through the Tornado Cash platform.

This conviction is particularly noteworthy because Tornado Cash is a noncustodial crypto mixing protocol, meaning that the platform does not hold or control the funds that pass through it.

Despite this, Pertsev was found guilty, having first been jailed in the Netherlands in August 2022, shortly after Tornado Cash was blacklisted by the United States government. Pertsev’s legal team has 14 days to appeal the court ruling.