NEW YORK — Roman Storm, the Twister Money developer standing trial in Manhattan on fees that the privateness software he created helped hackers and different cyber criminals launder greater than $1 billion in legal proceeds, gained't take the stand, his attorneys instructed the courtroom on Tuesday.
Storm instructed District Decide Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court docket of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was conscious that he had the fitting to testify in his personal protection however selected to not. After Storm made his choice, his protection group, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon.
Over three days of witness testimony, the protection argued that Storm was merely the developer of a reliable privateness software that was typically exploited by unhealthy actors – one thing which he and his co-founders might do little to truly cease, as a result of the Twister Money protocol and its swimming pools had been immutable. Whereas Storm and the opposite Twister Money co-founders made cash from the sale of TORN tokens, they didn’t revenue straight from Twister Money, witnesses testified. And, although prosecutors tried to painting Storm and his co-founders as detached — even callous — to the plight of hack victims whose cash was laundered by Twister Money, witness testimony, group chats and messages confirmed that Storm and his co-founders had been sad with hackers utilizing their platform.
In messages between Storm and his co-founder, Roman Semenov (who additionally faces the identical fees and stays at giant), Storm expressed concern within the wake of main hacks, together with the 2022 hack of Ronin Bridge, wherein North Korean hackers stole $600 million and funneled a portion of the proceeds by Twister Money. Within the chat, Storm and Semenov mentioned including the hackers’ pockets to the Twister Money person interface’s blocked listing.
“We urgently want to inform everybody we are not looking for these people to the entrance,” Storm instructed Semenov.
In one other string of messages following the Ronin Bridge hack, Storm instructed Semenov that the hackers’ use of Twister Money was “very severe.”
After the 2022 hack of the Concord Horizon Bridge, wherein some proceeds flowed by Twister Money, Storm — messaging with Haseeb Qureshi, managing companion at crypto enterprise capital agency Dragonfly Capital that invested virtually $1 million in Twister Money mother or father PepperSec Inc. — stated: “I’m glad these fuckers are detected.”
Worth of privateness
Storm’s protection elicited witness testimony detailing non-criminal the reason why somebody would possibly need to use a software like Twister Money to separate their identification from their monetary transactions.
Dr. Matthew Inexperienced, famend cryptography knowledgeable and professor of pc science at Johns Hopkins College, instructed the jury on Tuesday that the dearth of privateness was a “bug” within the majority of cryptocurrencies, exposing customers to threats from hackers and different attackers.
Inexperienced — who supplied his knowledgeable witness companies to Storm’s protection totally free — defined that, with out a software like Twister Money, Ethereum customers are exposing delicate private data with each transaction, together with how a lot cash they’ve, what they spend it on and who they affiliate with. This presents a variety of safety dangers, together with phishing makes an attempt, fraud and in-person “wrench assaults,” which Inexperienced defined have been “accelerating” lately.
Subsequent steps
Whether or not the jury will facet with the prosecution’s view of Twister Money or the protection’s has but to be determined.
Tomorrow, either side can have an opportunity to summarize their arguments in closing statements to the jury, after which the jury will probably be instructed by the decide on the fees towards Storm after which launched to deliberate.
