In Amsterdam, authorities arrest alleged Tornado Cash developer

Dutch authorities arrested the developer, allegedly linked to the Tornado Cash mixer.

A 29-year-old man was detained in Amsterdam. He is suspected of involvement in money laundering and concealing criminal financial flows through the cryptocurrency mixer.

In June 2022, the Netherlands’ Financial Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) opened a criminal investigation into Tornado Cash.

The agency contends that the mixer was used to conceal large criminal financial flows, including those resulting from cryptocurrency theft through hacks and fraud.

“These advanced technologies, such as decentralized organisations that may facilitate money laundering, are receiving increased scrutiny from the FIOD,” the authorities said, not ruling out further arrests.

According to some reports, the person is the developer Aleksei Pertsev. This information has not yet been officially confirmed.

My sources claim it’s @alex_pertsev

— banteg (@bantg) August 12, 2022

As a reminder, on August 8 U.S. authorities added the mixer site’s domain to the sanctions list, along with related cryptocurrency addresses. According to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, since 2019 funds totaling at least $7 billion have passed through Tornado Cash.

Subsequently, Circle added Tornado Cash USDC addresses to its blacklist after the sanctions were imposed. Infura and Alchemy restricted RPC requests to Tornado Cash.

The decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX blocked the accounts of users who had previously interacted with the mixing service.

After the U.S. designation, Tornado Cash assets fell by 15%.

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