Hack ‘Victims’ Say Tornado Cash Offered No Help in the Wake of Exploits: Day 2 of Roman Storm Trial

The trial of Roman Storm, a developer associated with the privacy tool Tornado Cash, entered its second day with government witnesses focusing on the platform’s alleged role in money laundering and its lack of assistance to victims of various hacks and scams. Testimony highlighted the experiences of several victims who received little to no help from Tornado Cash developers in recovering stolen funds.

A Taiwanese-American woman lost nearly $250,000 in a pig butchering scam, a portion of which was laundered through Tornado Cash; her requests for assistance went unanswered. Similarly, BitMart, a cryptocurrency exchange that suffered a $200 million hack in 2021, also sought help from Tornado Cash developers but received no effective response. Roman Storm reportedly informed BitMart’s lawyer that retrieving funds was impossible due to the decentralized nature of the protocol.

Andy Ho, CTO and co-founder of Sky Mavis (the company behind Axie Infinity), testified about the $625 million Ronin Network hack, a portion of which was laundered through Tornado Cash. Although Ho didn’t explicitly mention it, the Lazarus Group, North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking organization, was later identified as the perpetrator.

Prosecutors aimed to portray Storm as uncooperative and unwilling to assist victims or modify the protocol to deter criminal activity. The defense, however, countered that Storm’s inaction stemmed from Tornado Cash’s decentralized structure, highlighting his inability to unilaterally retrieve funds. They emphasized that Storm was the only individual who responded to BitMart’s lawyer, Joseph Evans, after the hack.

Cross-examination revealed that BitMart pursued recovery efforts with other entities like 1inch and Cloudflare, receiving no response, and only a small portion of the stolen funds from the Ronin Network hack were eventually recovered by Norwegian police. The defense questioned Ho about the various protocols and exchanges involved in the Ronin Network hack, including FTX, Huobi, and Crypto.com, but Ho’s memory on these details was limited. The trial continues to explore the line between Tornado Cash’s function as a legitimate privacy tool and its potential use in facilitating money laundering.