New York, New York – US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (Ofac) Sanctions against the privacy tool Tornado Cash cannot be discussed by the upcoming lawsuit against developer Roman Storm, gave a federal judge on Tuesday.
At a status conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla originally waived as to whether she would allow expert vitner to testify to the sanctions originally introduced in August 2022, removed in March and subsequently found illegal by a Texas court.
After hearing arguments from both the prosecution and the defense, Failla decided to give Storm’s movement in Limine, who moved to prohibit the testimony of the sanctions completely and argued that it would simply be too confusing for a jury to do what she described as the “mental gymnastics” of understanding why the sanctions were introduced and ultimately removed.
“I want to exclude referrals to August 2022 ofac sanctions,” Failla said with the warning that she left the possibility of a “unicorn document” – an important proof of the prosecution, which is related to Storm’s alleged behavior after the sanctions introduced – that could change her mind before the trial begins. Failla gave prosecutors until Wednesday to present such evidence. The judge had previously decided on Tuesday that the parties would not be allowed to discuss Van Loon against the Treasury Department case, which ultimately led to the sanctions being placed.
The rest of Storm’s movements in Limine (A type of experimental movement to exclude certain evidence or arguments from being allowed during the trial) was denied, including a proposal to exclude referrals to North Korea’s State’s sanctioned hacking group, the Lazarus group and a proposal to exclude “inflammatory characterization” of Storm’s cracked sales. Earlier in the day, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence that demonstrated that Storm served nicely from his commitment to Tornado Cash, including allegedly purchasing several homes and sold $ 12 million worth of cracked tokens after ofac sanctioned tornado cash.
Prosecutors said they are not planning to argue for the trial that Storm violated the bank secret law (BSA) By not implementing a knowledge-your-customer/anti-laundering of money laundering for tornado contains, only to express through their expert wine widespread as he could have, and chose not to do so.
Failla also gave to give the government the opportunity to provide evidence from Storm’s colleague Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertev’s phone. The Dutch Government allowed a US federal investigative agency (FBI) Agent to see a report on the contents of Pertsev’s phone from which the agent made his own report with selected pieces of information. Storm’s defense tried to get the Pertsev telephone voucher thrown out and argued that the report was cherry picked and impossible to authenticate, but the judge sitting with the prosecution and giving that the report was presumed.
After much back and forth between the parties over their respective expert vitner, Failla gave that all witnesses could testify, though she put some protection frames on certain witnesses on both sides.
It is not yet clear whether Storm will testify in his own defense, although Failla said Tuesday that if he were to take the position, he would not be allowed to claim that he had the protection of first change in his work with Tornado Cash.
Failla said Storm was free to discuss his belief in privacy, but said, “I don’t think free expression or first change rights should come up with this trial.”
One last conference before the trial will be held by telephone at 1 p.m. 15 one on Friday. Storm’s lawsuit is intended to begin on June 14 and is expected to run for four weeks.
