Twister Money developer Roman Storm’s authorized staff filed a movement Friday to dismiss a legal indictment alleging he conspired to commit cash laundering and violate sanctions.
Storm was arrested final 12 months over his work with Twister Money, which has been utilized by North Korean hackers and different teams to launder funds.
Storm didn’t work with these teams, however relatively simply printed code that anybody can use, the submitting mentioned.
Constructing Twister Money, a software that can be utilized to obscure the origin and vacation spot of cryptocurrency transfers, is just not the identical as laundering cash, mentioned a movement to dismiss the legal indictment towards developer Roman Storm.
Storm and fellow developer Roman Semenov have been indicted final summer season on prices of conspiring to commit cash laundering, conspiring to function an unlicensed cash transmitter and conspiring to violate the Worldwide Emergency Financial Powers Act (in different phrase, to violate U.S. sanctions). Storm was arrested and launched on bail. The U.S. Division of Justice, alleged that Twister Money facilitated the laundering of over $1 billion by teams like North Korea’s Lazarus. Twister Money has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Division a number of occasions now.
“Storm is a developer, and his solely settlement, along with the members of his U.S-based firm, was to construct software program options to supply monetary privateness to official cryptocurrency customers,” Friday evening’s submitting within the Southern District of New York mentioned. “This isn’t a criminal offense.”
The movement defines Twister Money, describing it as a “set of non-custodial good contracts through which customers keep full possession and management over their property with out the necessity to depend on any service supplier or different middleman,” versus custodial mixing companies. The submitting additionally disputed the concept that Twister Money is a mixer or a service.
It took intention at how the indictment described the Twister Money setup and Storm’s skill to affect it by the point interval the indictment focuses on, saying that Storm didn’t have the power to manage Twister Money or stop its use by Lazarus and comparable entities.
Furthermore, the submitting mentioned, Twister Money doesn’t match the definition of a “monetary establishment” as a result of customers keep management over their funds and the protocol “didn’t cost any price however was a free and open-source software program software.”
Storm could not have conspired to launder funds or function a cash transmitter if there wasn’t a Twister Money enterprise for him to have accomplished these with, the submitting mentioned.
The submitting additionally argued that Storm and different builders at Peppersec – the corporate arrange by the builders – by no means made an settlement with “alleged unhealthy actors,” saying the U.S. DOJ was “conflating the settlement to develop and publish Twister Money code with a (non-existent) settlement to interact in purported concealment cash laundering.”
The costs towards Storm are just like these towards fellow Twister Money developer Alexey Pertsev, who was arrested in August 2022 and went on trial this previous week on cash laundering prices. A verdict might be introduced in Might. Friday’s submitting famous that the legislation within the Netherlands, the place Pertsev was arrested and tried, is totally different from the U.S. by way of the precise prices.
Friday’s movement to dismiss got here shortly after Storm’s authorized staff filed motions to have the DOJ produce sure items of proof and suppress federal brokers’ efforts to grab Storm’s crypto holdings by means of a search warrant.
The movement to compel asks for a choose to order the DOJ to share any communications between U.S. authorities and Dutch authorities, in addition to any communications from the Treasury Division’s Workplace of Overseas Asset Management or Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community tied to Storm.
The movement to suppress argued {that a} search warrant was not the suitable software for the FBI to grab “any and all cryptocurrency” present in Storm’s residence. Whereas the warrant “permits for the seizure of ‘any and all cryptocurrency,'” that is “overbroad” and an affidavit doesn’t “set up possible trigger to consider that any and all cryptocurrency discovered would represent proof of a criminal offense.”