In a significant escalation of the U.S. government's legal campaign against cryptocurrency privacy tools, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has formally requested a retrial for Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm. Prosecutors are seeking a new trial on two conspiracy charges—money laundering and sanctions violations—where the initial jury deadlocked in August 2025. The proposed trial date is set for early October 2026.
The DOJ's retrial request, filed with Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the Southern District of New York, targets counts one and three of the superseding indictment. These charges carry a combined maximum sentence of up to 40 years in prison. This move comes despite a partial verdict where Storm was convicted on a separate charge of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
The case represents a critical test for the application of traditional financial laws to decentralized protocol developers. The DOJ alleges Storm knowingly facilitated the laundering of illicit funds, including over $7 billion since 2019 with transactions linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group, through the non-custodial Tornado Cash mixing service. The legal core hinges on whether the creator of an automated, open-source tool can be held liable for its subsequent use by third parties.
Background context adds complexity: the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, but those sanctions were later lifted after an appellate court questioned the agency's authority. Furthermore, the retrial request arrives amid mixed policy signals from Washington. On the same day, the Treasury Department sent a report to Congress acknowledging that "lawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to enable financial privacy."
Storm's defense has a pending Rule 29 motion for acquittal on legal grounds, scheduled for argument on April 9, 2026. The court must rule on this motion before any retrial proceeds. In response to the retrial request, Storm posted on X, "If I can't fund a defense, they win by default. If you care about financial privacy, if you write code and believe that code is speech—this is the moment."
The case is being closely watched as a potential precedent-setter. Legal and policy experts warn that a conviction could establish a new framework holding open-source developers criminally responsible for how their code is used, which would have a chilling effect on privacy-focused development in the crypto ecosystem.
