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.