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Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm will appear in court again in April 2027 on two charges: involvement in money laundering through the service he created and violation of international sanctions.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York has scheduled a hearing for April 26. Consultations must be completed by April 20, giving the parties several months to prepare. The prosecution had previously proposed holding the hearings in October of this year. Storm’s motion for acquittal is still under consideration by the court.
The first trial took place in August. The jury found Storm guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Regarding the charges of money laundering and sanctions violations, the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. These two specific charges will be reconsidered by the court. If the developer is found guilty, he faces a penalty of up to 40 years in prison.
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The Southern District of New York prosecutor’s office accused Storm of facilitating illegal transactions totaling over $1 billion through Tornado Cash. According to law enforcement, this sum includes funds stolen by North Korean hackers from the Lazarus group.
Roman Storm himself described the actions of the U.S. authorities as inconsistent. He cited court transcripts indicating that Chainalysis, a company that tracks suspicious transactions on blockchains, operated its own Tornado Cash relay node in 2022 and earned commissions from transactions passing through it. Lawyers from Chainalysis acknowledged this, yet the company is not being prosecuted, Storm wonders. This means that different standards are applied to software creators and providers of virtual asset services, Storm insists.
“A company that helped track my so-called criminal transactions through Tornado Cash was profiting from them, while I was being prosecuted simply for creating the software,” Storm wrote on the social network X.
Previously, the creator of Tornado Cash stated that U.S. authorities were pursuing him incorrectly because he had not interacted with the wrongdoers, and if he loses in court, it could mark the end of the entire decentralized finance (DeFi) industry.
