Federal prosecutors in New York have asked a Manhattan judge to retry Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, charged with two serious crimes: money laundering and sanctions evasion.
DOJ files letter requesting October trial window
The case was heard by the jury in 2025, where Storm was convicted of running an unlicensed money-transmitting business but hit a deadlock last August. However, the U.S. prosecutors have requested a retrial, proposing to start in early to mid-October 2026.
A letter was filed on Monday with the U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the Southern District of New York. The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated its intent to retry Storm and requested a retrial date on October 5 or 12, consistent with the defense’s indicated availability.
Tornado Cash was a privacy-focused crypto mixing service; however, it was used to launder illicit funds, including money stolen by Lazarus Group. According to the United States Department of the Treasury, about $7 billion has been moved through the protocol since 2019 and was blacklisted.
“If I can’t fund a defense, they win by default. If you care about financial privacy, if you write code and believe that code is speech—this is the moment,” Roman Storm wrote on X after the letter was made public.
Expert Analysis and the Potential Impact of the Retrial
Legal experts claim that the case could set a major precedent addressing whether the open-source developers could be held responsible for how people use their software and if privacy tools on blockchains could face legal risks.
The bill would say developers cannot be classified as money transmitters if they never control user funds, and if the court determines that the creators of decentralized tools can’t be held responsible for how others use the tools, the decision could significantly impact cryptocurrency regulation.
