On July 3, 2025, the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed to finish an enchantment that crypto advocacy group Coin Middle made to OFAC concerning the Ethereum-based mixing service Twister Money.
This choice by the courtroom 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 record for over three years.
The dismissal of this case formally ends Coin Middle’s difficult OFAC’s choice to incorporate Twister Money on its sanctions record.
Peter Van Valkenburgh, government director at Coin Middle commented on X earlier at the moment that the federal government didn’t need to proceed to defend an interpretation of sanctions legal guidelines that appeared too broad.
This enchantment being dropped comes within the wake of a memo from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche through which he acknowledged that the U.S. Division of Justice will now not goal crypto expertise like mixers.
Twister Money Builders Nonetheless On Trial
Even supposing this enchantment has been dropped and Twister Money is now not on the OFAC sanctions record, the creators of the expertise are nonetheless on dealing with felony costs.
Twister Money co-founder and developer Roman Storm is scheduled to look in federal courtroom within the Southern District of New York on Monday, July 14, 2025.
Storm is at present dealing with cash laundering and sanctions violations costs, although, he has affirmed that he didn’t revenue from illicit transactions that had been made by way of the Twister Money service.
In September of this yr, Storm’s legal professionals 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 expertise doesn’t take management of consumer funds (i.e., non-public keys). The courtroom denied the motion, although, stating that the BSA’s scope doesn’t require that the expertise take management of consumer 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 carry Semenov up on the identical costs as Storm.
