US Prosecutors Seek October Retrial for Tornado Cash Co-Founder Roman Storm
Tornado Cash uses smart contracts to obscure the flow of crypto assets. The US Justice Department says the service helped process more than $1 billion in illicit funds, including money laundered by North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Co-founder Roman Storm went on trial in a case testing the boundary between liability for open-source software and financial regulation, and whether developers can be held criminally responsible for crimes committed by users.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have asked a Manhattan federal court to retry Storm in early October 2026 on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions. A jury failed to reach a verdict on those two counts in August 2025 but convicted him of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The defense argues that the court should first rule on its motion to dismiss the charges. Convictions on both counts could carry a combined maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.
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The history behind this eventRoman Storm’s Tornado Cash Retrial Delayed to April 2027
Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-based crypto-mixing protocol designed to enhance transaction privacy through smart contracts, but U.S. authorities have alleged it was also used to launder illicit funds and evade sanctions. The prosecution of developer Roman Storm has become a closely watched test of whether software creators can be held criminally responsible for how others use decentralized code, drawing scrutiny from the crypto industry and privacy advocates.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has postponed Storm’s retrial until April 2027. A jury in 2025 convicted him on one count related to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business but failed to reach a unanimous verdict on money-laundering and sanctions-related charges. Prosecutors may retry those unresolved counts, extending the case’s final resolution by more than a year.
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