Vitalik Buterin Contributes $170K to Defend Tornado Cash Developers

• Vitalik Buterin's donation of 50 ETH to the legal fund.
• Pertsev faces conviction and plans to appeal.
• Storm and Semenov charged in US over Tornado Cash activities.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently made a generous donation of 50 Ether (ETH) — worth around $170.000 — to the legal fund for Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, developers of the Tornado Cash platform. This information was confirmed in an update on the Juicebox Free Pertsev and Storm project released on December XNUMX.

This financial contribution represents about 25% of the total amount of $650.000 available for Pertsev’s legal support, raised through JusticeDAO. These funds are vital for the defense of Pertsev and Storm, who face serious legal charges. In 2022, Pertsev was arrested by Dutch authorities, accused of involvement in the cryptocurrency mixing service. The following year, he was convicted of money laundering, receiving a sentence of more than five years, with plans to appeal the decision.

In the United States, both Storm and Roman Semenov, another developer associated with Tornado Cash, have been charged with money laundering, sanctions violations, and fraud. These charges are linked to the platform's activities, which, according to US authorities, has been used to launder more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency since 2019. In fact, North Korean hackers are said to have taken advantage of these services to hide illicit funds.

While Storm has secured bail conditions awaiting his trial scheduled for April 14, Semenov remains at large. The criminal charges against these developers apparently arose after the mixer was added to the list of specially designated nationals by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in August 2022.