Tornado Cash: Developer arrested in Amsterdam!

It seems that the Dutch authorities have arrested a Tornado Cash developer in Amsterdam. Today the 29 year old man will be presented to the investigating judge.

Tornado Cash: Dutch authorities arrest alleged platform developer

The Netherlands’ Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has reportedly arrested a man in Amsterdam suspected of being the developer of Tornado Cash, the crypto-mixer accused of money laundering and blacklisted by the United States.

The Netherlands, through the FIOD’s Financial Advanced Cyber Team (FACT) has since June 2022 launched a criminal investigation against Tornado Cash, accused of money laundering and concealing large-scale criminal money flows, including online crypto-currency theft.

Specifically, FACT believes that Tornado Cash was being used to launder funds stolen by hackers by a group allegedly associated with North Korea (the Lazarus Group).

Tornado Cash began operations in 2019 and, according to FACT, has since grown to at least $7 billion in sales. Investigations have shown that at least $1 billion in criminally-derived crypto-currencies have passed through the blender. It is suspected that those behind the organization made large-scale profits from these transactions.

Today, the 29-year-old suspect will be presented to the investigating judge, but the FIOD does not rule out multiple arrests in the near future.

U.S. OFAC sanctions imposed on crypto blender for money laundering.

The first to drop the “bomb“On Tornado Cash was the U.S. Treasury Department, which earlier this week, had claimed that the crypto mixer had been used to launder more than $7 billion in crypto, in 2019..

For this very reason, Tornado Cash is currently blacklisted by the US Treasury Department. OFAC. also said that it will sanction Ethereum addresses that interact with blacklisted wallet addresses.

Tornado Cash’s Discord server is also shut down.

Following the closure of the platform, its blacklisting by the U.S. Treasury Department the decision was also made to close the corresponding Discord server.

JUST IN: Tornado Cash Discord server has been deleted.

– Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) August 12, 2022

There is no specific reason yet, but it certainly had no further use. If it had remained active, the community would have continued to interact on this type of operation, making the efforts of the authorities futile.