US DOJ to back off money transmitter cases in shift backed by crypto

By Chris Prentice

(Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department does not plan to target software developers that create decentralized platforms for transmitting cryptocurrencies without criminal intent, a Justice official said on Thursday.

Marking the latest sign of the U.S. government's changing views on crypto, acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti of the DOJ's criminal division said the department will move away from bringing charges over failure to register as a money transmitter business.

"Our view is that merely writing code, without ill-intent, is not a crime," Galeotti said in remarks prepared for a crypto summit in Wyoming.

Money transmitters, such as Western Union and payment apps like Venmo, need to be licensed and follow certain rules for vetting customers and reporting suspicious activity to prevent money laundering.

Such rules have become a flashpoint for the crypto sector, especially for decentralized exchanges which often say they have no visibility or oversight over transactions on their platforms.

A jury earlier this month found a co-founder of Tornado Cash, a firm which makes cryptocurrency transactions harder to track, guilty of a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Anti-corruption advocates say such firms make it easier to launder illicit funds.

But critics of the case said the co-founder, Roman Storm, merely created the computer code. The jury in the case deadlocked over whether he was guilty of money laundering and sanctions evasion.

Those charges were brought by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan under the Biden administration. The DOJ under Republican President Donald Trump, whose family has been building a crypto business, has dramatically shifted its approach to the crypto sector.

The Justice Department has disbanded its crypto enforcement team, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a civil regulator, has walked away from a number of cases against crypto firms and executives.

(Additional reporting by Hannah Lang in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

View Comments