Peppers Aleksei

Peppers Aleksei

Biography

2024: Russian who wrote Tornado Cash code gets 5 years in Dutch prison

In May 2024, Russian Alexei Pertsev was sentenced by a Dutch court to five years and four months in prison for laundering $1.2 billion using a cryptocurrency mixer (software that serves as an intermediary between parties wishing to send and receive cryptocurrencies) Tornado Cash.

According to the investigation and the court, Pertsev is the developer of the Tornado Cash platform and is involved in at least 36 illegal operations. One of those transactions is said to be linked to the Axie Infinity game's Ronin blockchain bridge being hacked in 2022. As a result of the hacker attack, about $600 million was stolen in cryptocurrency at the exchange rate at the time of the incident. The charge mentions a transfer to 175 ETH that went through a mixer.

Prosecutor of the Netherlands National Office for Combating Financial Fraud and Confiscation of Assets Martine Boerlage (Martine Boerlage) said that the accused did not take sufficient measures to prevent the use of the mixer by attackers.

During the trial, Alexei Pertsev's lawyer Kate Cheng said that neither the client nor other persons could prevent users from using the mixer for their own purposes. However, the panel of judges did not accept the arguments of the defense, supporting the prosecution of the prosecutor's office.

The accused and his accomplices designed the tool in such a way that he automatically performs the actions to conceal information necessary for money laundering. The criminal user was completely taken care of, - says the court decision.

As noted by Coindesk, Pertsev received support from the crypto community: his supporters claim that he only wrote the Tornado Cash code and was not involved in any criminal activity associated with the use of the mixer.^[1]

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