Roman Storm from Tornado Cash urgently collects $ 1.5 million for the court

The co -founder of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer Roman Storm announced a critical lack of funds for defense in court. He announced the urgent collection of additional $ 2 million for future expenses.

Dear Crypto Community & Privacy Advocates,

This is an urgent Call: My Trial Begins July 14, and We’re Facing a Critical Shortfall. I NEED To RAise $ 500K in the Next Few Days and $ 1.5m within a couple of Weeks to Sustain OUR FIGHT – Covering Escalating Legal Fees, Expert … https://t.co/aimotqvjvd

– Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ (@rstormsf) July 12, 2025

He added that the funds raised will go to lawyers’ services and additional research, since the trial is delayed. Previously, representatives of the Free Pertsev & Storm legal protection fund predicted that everything will be decided in two weeks. Now the expected deadlines are three or four weeks.

The crypto community quickly reacted to the request of the co -founder of Tornado Cash. The decentralized autonomous organization MetaCartel transferred the entire treasury of the project to the fund. The representative of Golemfoundation announced a donation of 50 ETH.

Earlier, the storm was supported by the non -profit organization Ethereum Foundation (EF). She donated $ 500,000, and also fulfilled the promise to raise $ 750,000 from the community.

In October 2024, Vitalik Buterin also helped the developer by sending 100 ETH (~ $ 242,000).

The scandal on the eve of the court

Before the court, the protection of the storm accused American prosecutors of presenting distorted evidence. It’s about correspondence from Telegram, which was removed from the second person involved in the case – Alexei Pertsev.

In the lawsuit of July 12, the lawyers of the co -founder of Tornado Cash said that the prosecution did not take into account important metadata. During the hearing on July 8, the Federal Prosecutor Ben Arad mentioned allegedly Pertsev’s message:

We are talking about hacking the Ronin Sidchane at the Axie Infinity blockchain-game at $ 625 million.

Arad considered that Pertsev’s message is tantamount to guilty. In fact, this was originally written by Andrew Terman, who then worked as a senior reporter Coindesk. Pertsev sent a message to Tornado Cash chat, storm lawyers emphasized and noted:

The accusation admitted that the first versions of the correspondence were incomplete. Nevertheless, prosecutors insist that the essence of their claims from this does not change.

Storm lawyers are sure that such errors can directly affect the course of the matter – especially if it turns out that the prosecutor’s office knew about the problem, but hid it. In the worst case, the court may generally exclude these evidence from the process, the expert on digital law Andrew Rossou emphasized in a commentary for Decrypt.

Recall that the storm was accused of conspiracy to launder money, bypassing US sanctions and the implementation of unlicensed business transfer business through Tornado Cash. He faces up to 45 years in prison.

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