Roman Storm’s retrial on unresolved money-laundering and sanctions-evasion charges has been postponed to April 26, 2027, extending one of the most consequential U.S. criminal cases involving the developers of decentralized privacy software. A Tuesday scheduling order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York set the proceeding at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Manhattan, with a final pretrial conference scheduled for April 20.
Storm, a co-founder of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer, was convicted in August 2025 of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The jury did not reach a verdict on two other counts alleging money laundering and violations of U.S. sanctions law. Federal prosecutors subsequently sought to retry him on those unresolved charges after previously proposing an October 2026 trial date.
The pending counts carry a combined maximum statutory penalty of 40 years in prison, according to the government’s case. Storm has denied wrongdoing and argued that he wrote and helped maintain software that users could employ without his control over their transactions.
Acquittal motion remains undecided
The new trial schedule arrives without a decision on Storm’s September 2025 motion for acquittal, which asks Judge Katherine Polk Failla to dismiss the charges. The court heard oral arguments on that motion in April, and Tuesday’s order did not resolve it.
That procedural uncertainty leaves several central legal questions open. The government has argued that Tornado Cash was used to launder more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds and that its founders continued operating the service despite knowing it was being used by sanctioned actors and other illicit users.
Tornado Cash allows users to deposit crypto assets into a common pool and later withdraw equivalent funds to a different address. The process can weaken the public connection between a sender’s wallet and a recipient’s wallet, even though transactions remain recorded on the underlying blockchain.
Storm’s defense has focused on the decentralized and open-source character of the protocol. His lawyers have argued that developers cannot be treated as operators of every application built with code they released, particularly where they lack the ability to block individual users or reverse transfers.
The distinction will remain before the court even if the retrial goes ahead. Prosecutors must persuade a new jury that Storm’s conduct went beyond creating or publishing software and met the legal requirements for the alleged money-laundering and sanctions offenses.
Copyright ruling enters the defense argument
In an April filing, Storm’s lawyers cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision involving internet service provider Cox Communications and music-piracy claims. The Supreme Court ruled that Cox could not be held secondarily liable merely for providing internet access later used by subscribers to infringe copyrighted music, absent the required level of intent to profit from or support the infringement.
The case concerns copyright law rather than cryptocurrency or sanctions enforcement, but the defense has used its reasoning to challenge the government’s broader theory of liability. The filing argues that supplying a neutral technological service does not automatically make its creator criminally responsible when third parties misuse it.
The comparison places Tornado Cash alongside earlier legal disputes over intermediaries, from internet providers to software platforms. Federal prosecutors, in turn, have described Tornado Cash as more than a passive tool, citing alleged conduct by its developers and the project’s response to illicit use.
A ruling on the acquittal motion could narrow the case, uphold the existing conviction, or leave the full retrial path intact. Until then, the April 2027 date gives both sides additional time to prepare arguments over how criminal law applies to decentralized protocols whose code can continue operating without a traditional company controlling every transaction.
Chainalysis relayer cited in court filings
Court records cited by the defense also describe Chainalysis operating a Tornado Cash relayer in 2022 while assisting the government’s investigation. A relayer is a third-party service that submits withdrawal transactions on behalf of users, helping them avoid using the same wallet that received funds from the mixer and preserving a degree of address privacy.
The defense has pointed to the relayer as part of its challenge to the government’s portrayal of the Tornado Cash ecosystem. The records state that the relayer earned fees for processing transactions.
The detail illustrates a practical complication in the case: Tornado Cash’s smart contracts, relayers, front-end interfaces and related services were not necessarily run by one party. Prosecutors have sought to connect Storm to the alleged operation of a laundering service, while the defense has emphasized that other independent actors could interact with the protocol and provide associated services.
Blockchain analytics firms have become a major component of enforcement cases involving mixers, ransomware proceeds and sanctioned addresses. Their tools can identify transaction patterns and potential links among wallet addresses, though the legal dispute in Storm’s case concerns whether those transaction flows establish criminal responsibility for a protocol developer.
A longer path to resolution
The delay postpones a definitive court test of whether Tornado Cash’s creators can face criminal liability for operating or maintaining privacy-oriented software used by others. It also means Storm’s legal exposure will remain unresolved well into 2027, despite the jury’s earlier conviction on the money-transmission count.
The case has already unfolded against a changing policy environment for crypto privacy tools. U.S. authorities sanctioned Tornado Cash in 2022, alleging it had been used to process funds connected to North Korea’s Lazarus Group and other criminal activity. Those sanctions triggered sharp disruptions for services, wallets and users interacting with Tornado Cash-linked addresses.
The retrial will not decide the legality of every privacy technology or every crypto mixer. Its outcome will instead turn on the evidence concerning Storm’s own conduct, knowledge and alleged role in the Tornado Cash operation. Yet the arguments expected in Manhattan will be closely watched by developers building decentralized applications where software can remain accessible after its original authors step back.
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