Roman Storm, a developer associated with the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, faces a second trial after federal prosecutors moved Tuesday to dismiss his latest bid for case dismissal. In a three-page letter addressed to federal judge Katherine Polk Failla, attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that a recent Supreme Court ruling cited by Storm’s legal team has no relevance to his criminal proceedings. The letter signals that the government intends to press forward with its case despite Storm’s efforts to use the ruling in his defense.
Storm was arrested in 2023 and charged in connection with his role in operating Tornado Cash, a coin mixing platform that allowed Ethereum users to conduct private blockchain transactions. Prosecutors alleged that Storm was aware criminal actors were using the platform to launder money, even though the software functioned autonomously without his direct intervention. A Manhattan jury convicted him last summer of operating an illegal money transmitter but failed to reach a verdict on two additional charges related to money laundering and sanctions evasion.
Storm appealed the conviction, and last month the Trump administration’s DOJ filed to retry him on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit sanctions evasion. His attorneys believed they had found a potential avenue for relief when the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling on March 25 in an unrelated music copyright dispute involving internet provider Cox. That ruling found Cox could not be held liable for the illegal streaming activities of its customers.
Storm’s legal team argued in a letter to Judge Failla that the Cox decision was directly applicable to their client’s situation. They pointed out that the Trump administration itself had supported Cox’s position that an internet provider should not be deemed complicit in the unlawful acts of some of its users. Since the Supreme Court accepted that reasoning, Storm’s attorneys contended the same logic should apply to a software developer whose platform was misused by some participants.
Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York rejected that comparison outright. They noted that Cox had actively discouraged copyright infringement through internal policies that addressed the vast majority of identified violations, and that its services served a broad range of legitimate purposes. Storm’s circumstances, they argued, were fundamentally different, as he was personally aware of misconduct by certain Tornado Cash users and took no steps to intervene.
The DOJ also asserted in Tuesday’s letter that there is no evidence a crypto privacy service like Tornado Cash was capable of substantial noncriminal use, a claim likely to draw criticism from digital privacy advocates who argue all users of digital assets have a right to financial privacy. Prosecutors concluded that a civil copyright case bears no relevance to a criminal money laundering proceeding. “The defendant’s conduct simply is not comparable to the conduct at issue in Cox,” the letter stated.
The government’s continued pursuit of Storm is drawing attention given the Trump administration’s broader pro-crypto stance. The DOJ had previously pledged on multiple occasions to halt prosecutions of developers who build cryptocurrency privacy software, a commitment that was welcomed by the crypto industry. However, several such developers have since been sent to prison, a situation that remains a significant concern among privacy advocates and those who follow digital asset policy closely.
Originally reported by Decrypt.
