The U.S. Department of Justice has requested a second trial in the Tornado Cash mixer case.
U.S. prosecutors have formally asked the federal court to set a new trial date for Roman Storm, co-creator of the Tornado Cash platform, who is facing several financial crime charges.
According to documents filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Department of Justice intends to proceed with a second trial focused on two unresolved counts. Federal prosecutors proposed starting the proceedings between the first and second week of October 2026, with an estimated duration of about three weeks.
The charges against Roman Storm
Storm is at the center of an investigation involving Tornado Cash, a decentralized digital asset mixing protocol that federal authorities claim was used to launder more than $1 billion in illicit funds.
The first trial, which concluded last August, produced a partial verdict: the jury found Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business but failed to reach unanimity on the charges related to money laundering and violations of international sanctions.
Prosecutors specified in their filing that they intend to proceed again on Counts One and Three of the superseding indictment. Although a defense motion for immediate acquittal is scheduled to be heard on April 9, the Department of Justice has urged the court to set a trial date to avoid future scheduling conflicts.
Legal consequences
For Storm, a conviction on both charges at issue in the new trial could carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in U.S. federal prison.
In a message posted on X, Storm stated:
“I will never stop fighting for freedom. The 2 counts = up to 40 years in federal prison – For writing open-source code. For a protocol I don’t control. For transactions I never touched.”
Storm also revealed that he has already exhausted the funds allocated for his legal defense.
The legal proceedings against Storm began during the Biden administration, but the Department of Justice’s stance toward software developers has evolved under the Trump administration.
Last August, Matthew J. Galeotti, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, explicitly stated that “writing code” is not a crime.
Additionally, a recent Treasury Department report submitted to Congress acknowledged that mixers such as Tornado Cash can have legitimate privacy-protecting uses, including safeguarding personal wealth or protecting charitable donations.
It is also worth noting that the sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury on Tornado Cash in 2022 were lifted in 2025 following a favorable court ruling.
