Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s trial followed the law and the judge overseeing his case should not consider acquitting him of all charges, federal prosecutors said.
In a post-trial filing dated last Wednesday, lawyers from the Justice Department’s office in the Southern District of New York pushed back against Storm’s acquittal motion, saying they had proven with sufficient evidence that he had built and controlled Tornado Cash, the crypto-mingling service once sanctioned by the United States for its use by North Koreans and others.
In late September, Storm’s lawyers filed a post-trial motion arguing that District Judge Katherine Polk Failla should acquit him of all charges — not just the conspiracy to operate an unauthorized money transmitter he was convicted of, but also the two deadlocked charges, conspiracy to commit criminal offenses and money laundering. In the procedural filing, the defense argued that prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to truly support a conviction on any charge.
In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors stated that their evidence was indeed sufficient to demonstrate that Storm co-founded Tornado Cash and had built features he knew would help cybercriminals.
“Defendant’s control was neither passive nor random: he and his co-conspirators altered the user interface approximately 250 times between February 26, 2020, and August 8, 2022 (Tr. 1063-64, 1078-79), controlling the means by which the vast majority of users accessed the Tornado Service, (T29r. 1). During the charged period, received at least 96 percent of Tornado Cash users access the Tornado Cash service through the user interface (Tr. 1049, 1182),” the filing states, referring to portions of the transcript from the 4-week trial period.
The filing also argued that prosecutors had enough evidence to support their conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions charges, and the judge should not acquit either.
Storm’s lawyers have until this coming Wednesday to file a response.
