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Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

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Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#11

Post by SamPatt »

brookst wrote: post #10
superkuh wrote: post #5

This story is framed oddly. Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. Also compare this treatment to the employees at Wells Fargo/Wachovia who laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels, >The settlement reached between Wachovia and U.S. authorities, known as a "deferred prosecution," raises questions. It's a probationary agreement, effectively allowing the bank to evade prosecution if it abide…

The quote from prosecutors in the article is actually really good: it is about human behavior, not the tools. Abstracting the question to whether tumblers or cash or guns or whatever should be 100% legal or 100% illegal is too reductive to be useful for anything but rhetoric. It’s when people take actions with intent and outcomes that the law gets interested. Those are what we should talk about. Cash has lots of legi…

Was he making the software better for criminals because he wanted to help (and presumably benefit from) criminals, or was he just making the software more private for anyone, and that happened to help criminals too?

I don't know the answer, but I imagine looking at the benefits of his actions would help inform. Did he have ties to criminal organizations, or receive payments from them?

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#12

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
olegp wrote: post #2

Previous discussion when he was arrested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32436413

Top comment aged like milk: > Wow, just wow. Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? There must be more. Perhaps he also deployed it? That would be a different story. The article is quite murky in that regard. Perhaps they don't know yet Code isn’t law. The law is the law. If you enable the crime willfully, you are a party to it.

The state of that comment has nothing to do with age. The first reply, specifically to the "Am i alone..." validation-seeking performative question, is "Probably."

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#13

Post by superkuh »

itsoktocry wrote: post #8
superkuh wrote: post #5

This story is framed oddly. Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. Also compare this treatment to the employees at Wells Fargo/Wachovia who laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels, >The settlement reached between Wachovia and U.S. authorities, known as a "deferred prosecution," raises questions. It's a probationary agreement, effectively allowing the bank to evade prosecution if it abide…

People's default assumption seems to be that the prosecutors are corrupt, or dumb, or both. Wasn't the Wells Fargo amount much smaller, in the millions? And someone is going to jail for that, too?

It's easy to be confused about Wells Fargo money laundering. There are just so many repeated cases of it every few years. To be specific, I said the Wachovia one, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico... and yes, billions.

As for the prosecutors in general: they do a job. It's the DAs bringing indictments specifically that are corrupt as a rule.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#15

Post by ceejayoz »

SamPatt wrote: post #11
brookst wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote from prosecutors in the article is actually really good: it is about human behavior, not the tools. Abstracting the question to whether tumblers or cash or guns or whatever should be 100% legal or 100% illegal is too reductive to be useful for anything but rhetoric. It’s when people take actions with intent and outcomes that the law gets interested. Those are what we should talk about. Cash has lots of legi…

Was he making the software better for criminals because he wanted to help (and presumably benefit from) criminals, or was he just making the software more private for anyone, and that happened to help criminals too? I don't know the answer, but I imagine looking at the benefits of his actions would help inform. Did he have ties to criminal organizations, or receive payments from them?

> While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.”

When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top comment aged like milk: > Wow, just wow. Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? There must be more. Perhaps he also deployed it? That would be a different story. The article is quite murky in that regard. Perhaps they don't know yet Code isn’t law. The law is the law. If you enable the crime willfully, you are a party to it.

The state of that comment has nothing to do with age. The first reply, specifically to the "Am i alone..." validation-seeking performative question, is "Probably."

I think you would find a significant population on HN that would agree with the comment I quoted. I don't fault them, that's just how some brains are built and operate (we are all wired differently), either due to a libertarian model or autism/neurodiversity (which also inherently optimizes for software dev and engineering aptitude). I just wish these folks, before doing something like this, would ask someone: "Hey! I have this belief, and I want to work on this. Is there any potential harm by doing so? What does the risk calculation look like?" instead of "Imma throw this out into the world and Imma be fine." You might not be fine! And imho, we'd all be better off if you were fine vs going to prison, at least in this context.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#18

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

SamPatt wrote: post #11
brookst wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote from prosecutors in the article is actually really good: it is about human behavior, not the tools. Abstracting the question to whether tumblers or cash or guns or whatever should be 100% legal or 100% illegal is too reductive to be useful for anything but rhetoric. It’s when people take actions with intent and outcomes that the law gets interested. Those are what we should talk about. Cash has lots of legi…

Was he making the software better for criminals because he wanted to help (and presumably benefit from) criminals, or was he just making the software more private for anyone, and that happened to help criminals too? I don't know the answer, but I imagine looking at the benefits of his actions would help inform. Did he have ties to criminal organizations, or receive payments from them?

He was making the software better for criminals because he wanted to benefit from criminals. I can’t read Dutch, so I don’t know exactly what evidence was presented with regards to this guy, but the US DOJ has pretty damning evidence that Tornado devs knowingly allowed their service to launder the proceeds of the Axie Infinity hack. (https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/file/1311391/dl?inline)

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#19

Post by joemazerino »

brookst wrote: post #9

Key quote: > While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” I admit it sounds pretty damning to have a UI affordance for “keep my funds separate from the known criminals this service knowingly serves”. I have little sympathy for those who intentio…

"Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. False positives prevail and the list is held by institutions readily hostile towards crypto. People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained. The article itself says "30% of the funds were from illicit activity", which leaves 70%. When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like HSBC had it's directors arrested and thrown in jail?

This sets a dangerous precedent.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#20

Post by JumpCrisscross »

joemazerino wrote: post #19
brookst wrote: post #9

Key quote: > While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” I admit it sounds pretty damning to have a UI affordance for “keep my funds separate from the known criminals this service knowingly serves”. I have little sympathy for those who intentio…

"Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. False positives prevail and the list is held by institutions readily hostile towards crypto. People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained. The article itself says "30% of the funds were from illicit activity", which leaves 70%. When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like…

> People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained

Eh, they’re marked as suspicious. (Correctly.) But I don’t know if merely using Tornado would be enough to convict on in most competent jurisdictions.

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