The co-founder of Tornado Cash faces up to 45 years in prison, but the defense challenges the validity of an irrelevant testimony in the trial.
Roman Storm’s legal team, co-creator of the Tornado Cash mixer, is considering filing a motion for a mistrial after disputing the relevance of a victim’s testimony related to a scam.
During the July 21 hearing at the Manhattan federal court, Storm’s attorneys discussed with Judge Katherine Polk Failla the possibility of requesting a mistrial — that is, the annulment of the trial due to procedural irregularities — in relation to the testimony of witness Hanfeng Lin, according to Inner City Press.
A mistrial would entail declaring the entire judicial proceeding invalid due to a procedural error, with the possibility of a new trial before a different judge and jury.
The charges against Storm
Roman Storm faces a potential sentence of up to 45 years in prison after being indicted in 2023 on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business through Tornado Cash.
The other co-founder, Roman Semenov, who is also under indictment, has not appeared in court and is believed to be in Russia, his home country.
The disputed testimony
During the hearing, Hanfeng Lin testified that she had been the victim of a $190,000 theft through a romance scam on WhatsApp. The victim described how a scammer convinced her to buy bitcoin via an exchange and transfer the funds to a fake trading platform that showed nonexistent profits.
According to Lin, the crypto recovery service Payback informed her that part of her bitcoins had been converted into ether and processed through Tornado Cash. However, Storm’s attorney, David Patton, stated:
“Based on our research over the weekend, we can’t find that any of Ms. Lin’s funds went to Tornado Cash. We need to confer with Mr. Storm about moving for a mistrial.”
During the cross-examination of FBI Special Agent Joseph DeCapua, the government’s expert in blockchain tracing, it emerged that he had not been asked to analyze Lin’s transactions. DeCapua had previously testified about the alleged flows of cryptocurrency from hacking attacks through Tornado Cash.
The prosecution announced its intention to call IRS analyst Stephan George to testify in order to prove the link between Lin’s funds and the Tornado Cash protocol.
Researchers dispute the link to Tornado Cash
Independent experts have questioned the claims that Tornado Cash was used in the scam targeting Lin. Taylor Monahan, a security researcher at MetaMask, published an analysis on X showing that the scammers converted Lin’s bitcoins to ether without ever using the mixer.
Blockchain analyst ZachXBT confirmed Monahan’s findings, criticizing Payback’s analysis:
“[I don’t know] how you mess up the tracing that bad as a firm to where you couldn’t properly follow instant exchange deposits 1 hop from a theft address and then follow subsequent txns down the wrong path to Tornado [Cash].”
