Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Found Guilty, Sentenced to 64 Months in Prison by Dutch Court

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has been found guilty of money laundering by a Dutch judge at s-Hertogenbosch court on Tuesday. Pertsev has been given 64 months of prison time by the court.

The 31-year old Russian was escorted after the session by police to the cells under the court. This is where he will remain until the public prosecutor finds a prison in the Netherlands that is appropriate for his crimes.

"Tornado Cash does not pose any barrier for people with criminal assets who want to launder them," according to the translated verdict seen by CoinDesk. "That is why the court regards the defendant guilty of the money laundering activities as charged."

Pertsev can appeal his sentence, which starts today. It does not appear that the time he spent behind bars between his arrest in August 2022 and Tuesday's verdict will count against the time he now has to spend in prison.

An indictment shared ahead of the trial said that between July 9, 2019 and Aug. 10, 2022, Pertsev made "a habit of committing money laundering" and that he should have at least suspected the criminal origins of illicit transactions on the Tornado Cash platform.

The developer was first jailed in the Netherlands in August 2022 after Tornado Cash was blacklisted by the U.S government. At the time, the U.S. Treasury had alleged that Tornado Cash was a key tool for the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. The Lazarus Group has been tied to a $625 million hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network and other major crypto thefts.

The trial result could play in future trials of other Tornado Cash developers. Other developers of the crypto mixer, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, also face allegations of money laundering and sanctions violations in the U.S. Storm will go to trial this September, but Semenov has not yet been arrested. Storm was arrested last year, after the U.S. again added Tornado Cash to its sanctions watchlist.

In the U.S., however, Storm is not accused of being responsible for the laundering of $1.2 billion due to differences in how U.S. and Dutch laws address personal responsibility in this type of alleged crime.

UPDATE (May 14, 11:41 UTC): Updates headline and lede with prison sentence.

UPDATE (May 14, 13:00 UTC): Adds details, background.

UPDATE (May 14, 14:05 UTC): Adds additional details.