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 court docket occurred roughly two and a half months after the U.S. Treasury Division eliminated Twister Money from its OFAC Sanctions record 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 immediately that the federal government didn’t wish 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 Legal professional Basic Todd Blanche during which he said that the U.S. Division of Justice will not goal crypto expertise like mixers.
Twister Money Builders Nonetheless On Trial
Even though this enchantment has been dropped and Twister Money is not on the OFAC sanctions record, the creators of the expertise are nonetheless on going through felony expenses.
Twister Money co-founder and developer Roman Storm is scheduled to seem in federal court docket within the Southern District of New York on Monday, July 14, 2025.
Storm is presently going through cash laundering and sanctions violations expenses, although, he has affirmed that he didn’t revenue from illicit transactions that had been made via the Twister Money service.
In September of this 12 months, Storm’s attorneys submitted a movement to dismiss the costs, 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., personal keys). The court docket denied the movement, 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 discovered responsible of cash laundering in The Netherlands in Might 2024 and was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Roman Semenov, the third Twister Money co-founder, has been at giant and wished by the FBI since August 2023. The U.S. Division of Justice plans to carry Semenov up on the identical expenses as Storm.
