Dutch Prosecutors Seek 64-Month Jail Sentence for Tornado Cash Dev Alexey Pertsev

Prosecutors seek to sentence Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to 64 months in jail, members of their team told CoinDesk.

The consequences of the trial could have wider implications on how developers of open-source projects are treated.

Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev should be jailed for 64 months, prosecutors told the judge in his trial in the Netherlands for money laundering, members of the prosecuting team told CoinDesk.

The two-day trial, which could have implications on how developers are treated in courts elsewhere, was held in the ‘S-Hertogenbosch court on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The judge will deliver the verdict on May 14, the court said.

Pertsev has been accused of laundering $1.2 billion worth of crypto through the anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, the Dutch prosecutors detailed in an indictment that was shared ahead of the trial. The indictment said that between July 9, 2019 and Aug. 10, 2022 Pertsev made “a habit of committing money laundering.”

The developer was first jailed in the Netherlands in August 2022 shortly after the Tornado Cash platform was blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury Department alleged that Tornado Cash had been a key tool for the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking group that was tied to the $625 million hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network, among other issues.

Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Roman Semenov also face allegations of money laundering and sanctions violations in the U.S. Storm is set to go on trial this September. The U.S. has not yet arrested Semenov.

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