Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Regains Freedom Following Court Decision

After languishing in a Dutch jail for nine months, Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, was temporarily set free on Friday, but a 64-month sentence is still hanging over his head.

After spending nine months in a Dutch jail, Alexey Pertsev, a developer for the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, was temporarily released on Friday. However, a 64-month sentence still looms over his head.

Pertsev was arrested in May 2024 and sentenced to five years and four months (64 months) for allegedly facilitating over a billion dollars in money laundering through his work on Tornado Cash. His colleagues, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, face similar charges in the United States. Storm is set to stand trial in April and could face up to 45 years in prison, while Semenov is reportedly missing and wanted by the FBI.

Tornado Cash facilitates private transactions on the Ethereum blockchain by pooling and mixing cryptocurrency from multiple senders to conceal the origin of the funds. However, trouble arose when the North Korean cybercriminal network Lazarus Group used Tornado Cash to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in 2022. This activity prompted the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction the platform, an action that was later deemed unlawful. Nevertheless, Storm and Romanov were still charged.

In the Netherlands, Pertsev has been held in pre-trial detention since last year. But in a positive development, the court released the 31-year-old developer, placing him under house arrest and electronic monitoring until his trial date.

“Freedom is priceless,” Pertsev wrote in a post on X. “My house arrest was only possible thanks to the work of lawyers, who were paid from your donations. My fight is not over yet, and for a final and confident victory, I still need your help.”