A panel of judges in the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch found the creator of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, guilty of laundering $1.2 billion. The Russian citizen was sentenced to prison for five years and four months. Lawyers have two weeks to file an appeal.

Alexey Pertsev is charged with conducting at least 36 illegal transactions from July 2019 to August 2022. One of them has to do with hacking the Ronin blockchain bridge of the Axie Infinity game in 2022. Then, as a result of the attack, hackers stole $600 million in cryptocurrency. The indictment involves a transfer of 175 ETH that went through Tornado Cash.

Martine Boerlage, a prosecutor at the Dutch National Authority for Financial Fraud and Asset Confiscation, said the defendant did not take sufficient measures to prevent criminals from using the mixer.

During the trial, Alexey Pertsev's lawyer Kate Cheng said that neither the client nor other persons could prevent users from using the mixer for their own purposes. However, the panel of judges did not accept the defense's arguments, supporting the prosecution's charges.

“Tornado Cash, by its nature and operation, is a tool designed for criminals. Under the pretext of ideology, you did not care about the laws and regulations that apply to everyone, feeling like you were untouchable,” one of the judges declared.

The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash on August 10, 2022. Alexey Pertsev, living in a suburb of Amsterdam, was arrested a few days later. As a result, customer funds were blocked, the source code of Tornado Cash was blocked, and US tax residents were prohibited from using the mixer.

Earlier, lawyers for the co-founder of the cryptomixer Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, filed a petition in the New York District Court to dismiss the charges against the businessman for facilitating the laundering of funds amounting to more than $1 billion.