On July 3, 2025, the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed to finish an attraction that crypto advocacy group Coin Middle made to OFAC concerning the Ethereum-based mixing service Twister Money.
This resolution by the court docket occurred roughly two and a half months after the U.S. Treasury Department removed Tornado Cash from its OFAC Sanctions list after having saved it on the listing for over three years.
The dismissal of this case formally ends Coin Middle’s difficult OFAC’s resolution to incorporate Twister Money on its sanctions listing.
Peter Van Valkenburgh, government director at Coin Middle commented on X earlier at present that the federal government didn’t need to proceed to defend an interpretation of sanctions legal guidelines that appeared too broad.
This attraction being dropped comes within the wake of a memo from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during which he said that the U.S. Division of Justice will not goal crypto know-how like mixers.
Twister Money Builders Nonetheless On Trial
Although this attraction has been dropped and Twister Money is not on the OFAC sanctions listing, the creators of the know-how are nonetheless on going through legal fees.
Twister Money co-founder and developer Roman Storm is scheduled to look in federal court docket within the Southern District of New York on Monday, July 14, 2025.
Storm is at the moment going through cash laundering and sanctions violations fees, although, he has affirmed that he didn’t revenue from illicit transactions that had been made by the Twister Money service.
In September of this yr, Storm’s attorneys submitted a movement to dismiss the fees, stating that Twister Money didn’t meet the definition of a cash transmitter underneath the Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA) as a result of the know-how doesn’t take management of person funds (i.e., non-public keys). The court docket denied the motion, although, stating that the BSA’s scope doesn’t require that the know-how take management of person funds.
Alexey Pertsev, one other Twister Money co-founder, was found guilty of money laundering in The Netherlands in May 2024 and was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Roman Semenov, the third Twister Money co-founder, has been at massive and wanted by the FBI since August 2023. The U.S. Division of Justice plans to convey Semenov up on the identical fees as Storm.
