In the fall of 2020, as crypto scammers and thieves began to realize the full potential of a financial privacy tool called Tornado Cash—a clever new system capable of shuffling users’ funds to cut the trail of crypto transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain—Alexey Pertsev, one of the creators of that service, sent a note to his fellow cofounders about this growing issue. He suggested crafting a standard response to send to victims pleading with Tornado Cash for help with stolen funds laundered through their service. “We must compose a message that we will send to everyone in similar cases,” Pertsev, the then-27-year-old Russian living in the Netherlands, wrote
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