New York – Manhattan jury, who was tasked with deciding Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm’s fate, the court told the court on Wednesday morning that they were the dead water, unable to reach a unanimous sentence on at least one of the prosecutors.
The note to district judge Katherine Polk Failla from the southern district of New York came on the fourth day of jury considerations. According to reports from Inner City Press, Storm’s lawyers suggested that the court accept a partial verdict, while prosecutors requested that the jury be given a all -prosecutor – essentially an instruction from the right to continue to consider in an attempt to reach a unanimous sentence on all charges.
Failla sided with prosecutors, brought the jury into the courtroom and instructs them to try to reach a verdict, but tells them that it is their right not to agree or change their opinions if an agreement really cannot be reached.
The jury’s notes over the last several days of considerations have indicated that the juries carefully considering all facets of the case, including some of the more procedural aspects as a venue. On the first day of consideration, the jury asked what proof of place (basically prosecutors’ rationale for bringing the case in the southern district of New York) the prosecutors showed the great jury in 2023 to get their indictment.
Yesterday, the jury asked the referee for transcripts from the testimony of an FBI agent who conducted cell-site analysis on venture capitalist Tom Schmidt from Dragonfly Capital, who invested $ 900,000 in Tornado Cash’s parent company PepperSec Inc., the fact that Schmidt is based in New York, used by prosecution to establish place. Note, seemed to have been because of this logic. In their note they asked for transcripts of the agent’s testimony “to prove the venue.”
The jury has also asked whether Storm was legally obliged to respond to requests for assistance from foreign law enforcement, and whether intermediate wallets were also included in the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) specially designated Nationals (SDN) list.
Storm is charged with a counting each of the conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to run an unlicensed money that transmits business and conspiracy to violate international sanctions. If Storm is found guilty of all charges, he faces a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. Prosecutors say Storm and his colleagues Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov through Tornado Quotants helped hackers and other cyber criminal-inclusive North Korea’s state-sanctioned hacking team, the Lazarus group-whitening over 1 billion in criminal revenue.
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