The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), part of the Ministry of Finance, added Tornado Cash to the sanctions list in August 2022, citing the fact that hackers from North Korea use the mixer to launder stolen cryptocurrencies.

Its developer Alexey Pertsev was sentenced in the Netherlands to more than five years in prison on charges of laundering $ 1.2 billion. In the United States, the trial continues against the founders of the project Roman Storm and Roman Semenov.

After the sanctions were imposed, Tornado Cash user Joseph Van Loon and five other plaintiffs sued the Treasury Department and its head Janet Yellen, as well as OFAC and OFAC Director Andrea Gaki for abuse of authority. The plaintiffs argued that Tornado Cash should not be sanctioned because it is software, not an individual or legal entity, and the court sided with them.