A U.S. federal judge has pushed Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm's retrial to April 26, 2027, about six months later than planned, while his motion seeking to overturn his existing conviction remains unresolved.
Storm's Retrial Moved to April 2027
The Aug. 25 court order states that U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted Storm's request to postpone the proceedings, moving the retrial from an October 2026 timetable after his defense cited scheduling conflicts and the pending motion for judgment of acquittal. Storm filed the Rule 29 motion on Sept. 30, 2025, challenging his conviction for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business on the grounds that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to sustain the verdict.
Failla heard oral arguments on April 9, 2026, but had not ruled on the request when she issued the latest scheduling order. Under the revised calendar, Storm will face another jury on two charges left unresolved during his first trial: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions. Each carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. The case highlights the ongoing tension between crypto privacy tools and compliance enforcement, a theme also seen in the recent Kraken dust transfer incident.
The First Jury Convicted Storm on Only One Count
Storm went to trial in Manhattan in the summer of 2025 on three criminal charges stemming from his involvement with Tornado Cash, the Ethereum-based privacy protocol he co-founded. After several weeks of testimony and four days of deliberations, jurors returned a split verdict on Aug. 6, 2025. They found Storm guilty of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business but could not unanimously decide the money laundering and sanctions conspiracy counts.
Failla declared a mistrial on the two unresolved counts, leaving prosecutors with the option to try Storm again before another jury. The charge on which Storm was convicted carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The two counts awaiting retrial carry substantially higher penalties, with up to 20 years available on each if a conviction is secured. Before the first trial began, the Justice Department had already reduced part of its case by dropping a portion based on alleged failure to comply with federal money transmitter registration requirements.
Tornado Cash Sanctions Were Removed Before the Trial
Tornado Cash allows users to deposit cryptocurrency into smart contracts and later withdraw funds to a separate address, reducing the direct on-chain connection between the sending and receiving wallets. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the protocol in August 2022, accusing it of being used to launder billions of dollars in virtual currency, including funds stolen by North Korea's Lazarus Group.
Legal challenges to those sanctions later produced an outcome separate from Storm's criminal prosecution. In November 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that immutable Tornado Cash smart contracts could not be treated as property under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because they could not be owned or controlled. Treasury subsequently removed Tornado Cash sanctions on March 21, 2025. The sanctions decision did not terminate the criminal proceedings against Storm, as prosecutors continued arguing that his conduct before and during the period covered by the indictment could support the separate conspiracy charges. This case is part of a broader regulatory enforcement landscape that includes blockchain analytics operations targeting illicit crypto activity.
Developer Control Remains Disputed
Questions over how much control developers exercise over decentralized protocols remain central to Storm's case. His lawyers have argued that Tornado Cash operated through decentralized smart contracts and that its developers did not control individual transactions or take custody of funds moving through the protocol. Prosecutors have focused on whether Storm continued developing, promoting and financially benefiting from Tornado Cash despite knowing that criminals and sanctioned actors were using the protocol.
Expert disclosures will now take place in early 2027, with a final pretrial conference scheduled for April 20, six days before the trial is due to begin. If Failla grants Storm's Rule 29 motion, his conviction on the unlicensed money transmitting charge could be set aside. If the motion is denied, the conviction would remain in place while prosecutors proceed with their second attempt to secure verdicts on the two charges on which the original jury deadlocked.
