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Roman Storm, the co-founder of the sanctioned Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer, has accused federal prosecutors of significantly mishandling crucial evidence prior to his criminal trial set for July 14 in Manhattan.
The contention revolves around a Telegram message stating, “Heya, anyone around to chat about axie? Would like to ask a few general questions about how one goes about cashing out 600 mil,” which alluded to the $600 million exploit involving Axie Infinity.
As per court documents dated July 12, 2025, prosecutors initially asserted that the message was written by Storm’s co-developer, Alexey Pertsev.
Source: Court Listener
Defense lawyers disclosed that the message was actually composed by Andrew Thurman, a former senior tech reporter at CoinDesk, and subsequently forwarded to a Tornado Cash chat by Pertsev.
This information surfaced just days before Storm’s trial, where he faces charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and sanctions violations linked to Tornado Cash, which allegedly enabled over $1 billion in illegal transactions.
Government’s Evidence Chain Under Tight Scrutiny
The issue arises from Dutch authorities’ extraction of what prosecutors assert is Pertsev’s phone following his arrest in the Netherlands, where he received a 64-month prison sentence for money laundering via Tornado Cash.
DOJ pursues federal charges against Roman Storm, cofounder of Tornado Cash, after dropping unlicensed money transmission charge.#TornadoCash #RomanStorm https://t.co/ZGXe7IGREZ
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) May 16, 2025
DOJ pursues federal charges against Roman Storm, cofounder of Tornado Cash, after dropping unlicensed money transmission charge.#TornadoCash #RomanStorm https://t.co/ZGXe7IGREZStorm’s defense maintains that the government’s extraction has several critical flaws, including the absence of author information for forwarded Telegram messages and incomplete file retrieval by FBI Agent Dickerman from Dutch authorities.
The defense argues that prosecutors cannot verify the completeness of the extraction since they faced limitations in the files they could acquire from Dutch law enforcement.
This authentication issue becomes increasingly important as the government acknowledged in court documents that its initial September 2023 submission of extracted text messages to the defense did not include “forwarded” tags on forwarded messages.
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Prosecutors provided a revised version in December 2024, which they intend to use at trial, but defense attorneys contend that this timeline raises significant concerns regarding the government’s evidence management.
The misattribution had tangible repercussions in court proceedings when Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Arad cited the message during a July 8 pretrial hearing, informing the judge that it illustrated the co-founders’ awareness of illicit activities.
According to the hearing transcript, Arad stated: “For example, when the Ronin hack occurred, one of the co-conspirators asked, sum and substance, I’d like to ask you some questions about how you go about laundering $600 million worth of stolen crypto.”
The defense characterized this as providing “false information” to both the court and potentially the grand jury that issued the indictment.
Defense attorneys noted in their filing: “Given that the government mistakenly attributed the reporter’s Telegram message to Pertsev at the Pretrial Conference, it appears that the government itself was unaware of this issue until the defense brought it to light.”
Enforcement Challenges Echo Across Crypto Cases
The evidence dispute underscores a trend of prosecutorial challenges arising in high-profile cryptocurrency cases, particularly when international evidence collection intersects with intricate digital communications.
Just last month, the DOJ encountered similar authentication difficulties in the case of Russian crypto CEO Iurii Gugnin, who was charged with orchestrating a $530 million fraud scheme through his Miami-based platform Evita.
A Russian crypto firm CEO used his crypto company, Evita, to funnel $530 million of overseas payments via US banks and crypto platforms.#Evita #CryptoFraud #IuriiGugninhttps://t.co/hk5kgucF95
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) June 10, 2025
This case also involved cross-border evidence gathering and inquiries regarding the authenticity of digital communications used to establish criminal intent.
Storm’s defense has consistently argued that the case poses a threat to the criminalization of open-source software development, with the Ethereum Foundation committing $500,000 to his legal defense and matching up to $750,000 in community contributions.
As part of the DOJ’s crackdown on crypto fraud, the recently seized $225 million in USDT was associated with a global “pig butchering” scam that defrauded over 400 victims through a network of international exchanges and wallets.
The post Tornado Cash Developer Storm Claims DOJ Bungled Critical Telegram Evidence appeared first on Cryptonews.
