5 hours ago
Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm told 1 victim’s lawyer that helium couldn’t bash thing to retrieve the funds fixed the decentralized quality of the protocol.
Jul 16, 2025, 7:40 p.m.
NEW YORK — Hack and scam victims who reached retired to Tornado Cash requesting assistance retrieving their stolen funds received small successful the mode of assistance from the privateness tool’s developers, 3 authorities witnesses told the assemblage during time 2 of Roman Storm’s transgression wealth laundering trial.
One victim, a Taiwan-born Georgia pistillate who said she mislaid astir $250,000 to a wrong-number pig butchering scam — with a information of the proceeds laundered done Tornado Cash — said her petition for assistance went unanswered. Another witness, a lawyer for crypto speech BitMart, which was hacked for astir $200 cardinal successful 2021, said that Storm told his squad that determination was thing helium oregon his chap developers could bash to retrieve the funds fixed the decentralized quality of the protocol.
A 3rd witness, Andy Ho — CTO and co-founder astatine Sky Mavis, the blockchain gaming institution down Axie Infinity and the Ronin Network — detailed however hackers stole implicit $625 cardinal successful an exploit of Ronin Bridge successful 2022, successful effect afloat looting the protocol’s coffers. Though Ho himself didn’t notation it during his testimony, the radical down the exploit was later revealed to beryllium the Lazarus Group, North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking organization, which utilized Tornado Cash to launder a information of the stolen funds.
During their introspection of the 3 witnesses, prosecutors attempted to overgarment a representation of Storm arsenic idiosyncratic who refused to assistance a digit to assistance hack victims, oregon to marque changes to the Tornado Cash protocol to dissuade aboriginal usage of the protocol by criminals.
Storm’s lawyers, erstwhile they had the accidental to cross-examine the "victim" witnesses, formed their client’s deficiency of enactment successful different light: helium was, they insinuated, incapable to assistance retrieve funds, due to the fact that Tornado Cash was decentralized. Storm told BitMart’s lawyer — New York-based Joseph Evans, a spouse astatine instrumentality steadfast McDermott, Will and Emery — truthful himself successful an email connected Dec. 15, 2021, according to an grounds introduced by the government.
Evans besides admitted connected cross-examination that Tornado Cash wasn’t the lone spot BitMart’s hacked funds went aft the exploit: his steadfast besides reached retired to 1inch, a decentralized speech aggregator, which told them to travel backmost with a warrant, arsenic good arsenic Cloudflare — a large website infrastructure supplier — and Binance. Evans said helium received nary effect from the second 2 companies.
Brian Klein, a spouse astatine Waymaker LLP and a lawyer for Roman Storm, asked Evans if it was existent that the lone idiosyncratic who had ever straight responded to Evans’ inquiries successful the aftermath of BitMart’s hack was Roman Storm.
“That’s correct,” Evans said.
Storm’s lawyers asked Ho, the CTO of Sky Mavis, a akin enactment of questions erstwhile helium was connected the stand, though Ho — who said helium had been subpoenaed by the authorities and asked to question to New York from his hometown of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to attest — was little forthcoming.
Keri Axel, different Waymaker spouse and subordinate of Storm’s defence team, asked Ho if helium remembered the findings presented to Sky Mavis by Crowdstrike aft the exploit, including that the stolen funds had filtered done a fig of protocols and exchanges too Tornado Cash, including FTX, Huobi, and Crypto.com.
“I don’t recall,” Ho said to each.
Axel asked however much, if any, of the stolen wealth was capable to yet beryllium recovered. Ho said that $6 cardinal was returned by Norwegian police.
“Did you recognize that that $6 cardinal had gone done Tornado Cash?” Axel asked Ho.
“I don’t person that knowledge," Ho said.
Cheyenne Ligon
On the quality squad astatine CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses connected crypto regularisation and crime. Cheyenne is primitively from Houston, Texas. She studied governmental subject astatine Tulane University successful Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, wherever she focused connected concern and economics reporting. She has nary important crypto holdings.
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