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Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has appealed against his guilty conviction, handed down by a Dutch court, which sentenced him to 64 months in jail.
Pertsev was sentenced on Tuesday in the Netherlands for his part in facilitating $1.2 billion in money laundering through Tornado Cash between July 2019 and August 2022.
Dutch prosecutors have highlighted 36 alleged illicit transactions through Tornado Cash of which Pertsev was supposedly a co-perpetrator.
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After the verdict, Pertsev was taken into custody. It is unclear if his appeal has been approved or if he has requested to await the appeal trial at home.
One of the judges claimed that the crypto mixer was primarily a tool for criminal activity.
Pertsev was jailed in August 2022 after Tornado Cash was blacklisted by the US government, which alleged that the platform was utilized by the North Korean hacker group, Lazarus.
The Russian-born software whizz was detained for almost nine months and continues to be monitored with a GPS but has denied the allegations ever since.
Tornado Cash co-developers Roman Storm and Roman Semonov were also charged in August 2023. Storm will be trialled in the US in September.
2024 is the year that will define the rest of my life.
— Roman S (@rstormsf) January 22, 2024
Honestly, I’m scared. But also hopeful that this community cares with a passion.
Please donate towards my legal defense.https://t.co/dQ7SCBesIm pic.twitter.com/0jeievSUxc
Prosecution against Pertsev has been regarded as prosecution against developers by the open-source community. A guilty verdict would threaten developers working on projects that could later be deemed unlawful.
Pertsev has received support from the wider crypto community including Coinbase. “If these sanctions stand, the damage will extend beyond these six individuals, and even beyond Tornado Cash,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X. “Even though we’re not the ones facing the brunt of these damages, we couldn’t stand by.”
