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Roman Storm Guilty of Unlicensed Money Transmitting Conspiracy in Partial Verdict

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NEW YORK — Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm has been found guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, a Manhattan jury decided Wednesday.

The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the remaining charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate international sanctions, despite four days of deliberations after the three-week trial. A sentencing date has not yet been set, and it is currently unclear whether prosecutors will elect to re-try Storm on the remaining charges. Prosecutors told the court on Wednesday afternoon that they will confer internally and decide.

Storm was arrested in 2023 and charged with helping hackers and other cyber criminals, including North Korea’s famed hacking squad, the Lazarus Group, launder more than $1 billion in dirty money through Tornado Cash, the crypto privacy tool he helped develop.

After the jury read the verdict, prosecutors moved for Storm, who is currently out on bail, to be remanded to prison to await sentencing, arguing that “he is from Russia” (Storm was born in Kazakhstan and is a U.S. citizen who has lived in Seattle, Washington for over a decade), “has advised people how to cheat the immigration system” and has the financial means to flee the country, according to reports from Inner City Press.

Storm’s lawyers pushed back, arguing that the developer is not a flight risk. Keri Axel, a partner at Waymaker and a lawyer for Storm told District Judge Katherine Polke Failla of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that Storm surrendered his passport and has deep family ties — including joint custody of a five-year-old daughter in Washington state, where he lives, and extended family in Sacramento, California — to the United States.

Failla ultimately sided with Storm’s lawyers, arguing that she did not think Storm was a flight risk since he was only convicted on one charge.

“He may appeal, he has every incentive to stay and fight,” Failla said. “He is not a risk of flight, given the size of the bond. There is a lot of fighting left in this case before sentencing, and I think Mr. Storm will stay for it.”

Amanda Tuminelli, executive director and chief legal officer at the DeFi Education Fund, said that the organization will continue to support Storm as he fights the conviction on the money transmitting business charge, calling it «fundamentally flawed charge from the start.»

«It is incredibly disappointing that the jury hung on the other two counts…because they also rest on the inaccurate, dangerous, and limitless pricniple that a software dev can be held responsible for third parties’ use of their code. But it is not surprising the jury could not agree on those two counts — the DOJ made a ton of mistakes and they should not retry Roman on those charges,» Tuminelli said in an X post. «It is now the Trump DOJ — not the Biden DOJ — who has a decision to make, and they absolutely can and should choose NOT to allow SDNY to pursue this case further.»

The verdict in Storm’s case comes just a week after the developers of Samourai Wallet, a Bitcoin-focused privacy tool similar to Tornado Cash, pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The developers, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, changed their initial ‘not guilty’ pleas after reaching a deal with prosecutors that saw the heftier money laundering conspiracy charges dropped.

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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: Index Drops 2.5% as Nearly All Constituents Decline

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CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 4248.74, down 2.5% (-109.09) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.

One of 20 assets is trading higher.

9am CoinDesk 20 Update for 2025-09-15: vertical

Leaders: AVAX (+0.6%) and BCH (-0.8%).

Laggards: UNI (-9.9%) and LINK (-7.0%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

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Pantera-Backed Solana Treasury Firm Helius Raises $500M, Stock Soars Over 200%

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Helius Medical Technologies (HSDT) announced on Monday it’s raising more than $500 million in a private financing round to create a Solana-focused treasury company.

The vehicle will hold SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain, as its reserve asset and aims to expand to more than $1.25 billion via stock warrants tied to the deal, the press release said.

The financing was led by Pantera Capital and Summer Capital, with participation from investors including Animoca Brands, FalconX and HashKey Capital.

Shares of the firm rallied over 200% above $24 in pre-market trading following the announcement. Solana was down 4% over the past 24 hours.

The firm is joining the latest wave of new digital asset treasuries, or DATs, with public companies pivoting to raise funds and buy cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) or SOL.

Helius is set to rival with the recently launched Forward Industries (FORD) with a $1.65 billion war chest backed by Galaxy Digital and others. That firm confirmed on Monday that has already purchased 6.8 million tokens for roughly $1.58 billion last week.

Helius’ plan is to use Solana’s yield-bearing design to generate income on the holdings, earning staking rewards of around 7% as well as deploying tokens in decentralized finance (DeFi) and lending opportunities. Incoming executive chairman Joseph Chee, founder of Summer Capital and a former UBS banker, will lead the firm’s digital asset strategy alongside Pantera’s Cosmo Jiang and Dan Morehead.

«As a pioneer in the digital asset treasury space, having participated in the formation of the strategy at Twenty One Capital (CEP) with Tether, Softbank and Cantor, Bitmine (BMNR) with Tom Lee and Mozayyx as well as EightCo (OCTO) with Dan Ives and Sam Altman, we have built the expertise to set up the pre-eminent Solana treasury vehicle,» Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital, said in a statement.

«There is a real opportunity to drive the flywheel of creating shareholder value that Michael Saylor has pioneered with Strategy by accelerating Solana adoption,» he added.

Read more: Solana Surges as Galaxy Scoops Up Over $700M Tokens From Exchanges

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American Express Introduces Blockchain-Based ‘Travel Stamps’

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American Express has introduced Ethereum-based ‘travel stamps’ to create a commemorative record of travel experiences, as part of the firm’s revamped travel app.

The travel experience tokens, which are technically NFTs (ERC 721 tokens), are minted and stored on Coinbase’s Base network, said Colin Marlowe , VP, Emerging Partnerships at Amex Digital Labs.

The travel stamps, which can be collected anytime a traveler uses their card, are not tradable NTF tokens, Marlowe explained, and neither do they function like blockchain-based loyalty points – at least for the time being.

“It’s a valueless ERC-721, so technically an NFT, but we just didn’t brand it as such. We wanted to speak to it in a way that was natural for the travel experience itself, and so we talk about these things as stamps, and they’re represented as tokens,” Marlowe said in an interview.

“As an identifier and representation of history the stamps could create interesting partnership angles over time. We weren’t trying to sell these or sort of generate any like short term revenue. The angle is to make a travel experience with Amex feel really rich, really different, and kind of set it apart,” he said.

The Amex travel app also includes a range of tools for travels and Centurion Lounge upgrades, the company said.

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