Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are seeking another chance to convict Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, asking a judge to schedule a retrial this October on two felony counts where jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict last year.
The petition, filed Monday in the Southern District of New York, will reopen one of the most consequential legal battles over software development restrictions and criminal liability in the cryptocurrency industry.
The case centers on Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer designed to hide the origin and destination of blockchain transactions.
Prosecutors argue that the device enabled large amounts of illegal money. Storm and his supporters argue that the government is trying to legalize open source code.
Storm’s first trial ended in August with mixed results. A Manhattan jury convicted him of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business but was acquitted on two other charges: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions.
Those unsolved counts have more severe penalties. A conviction for both could expose Storm to up to 40 years in state prison.
In a letter to Judge Katherine Polk Failla, prosecutors said a new trial date should be set now to avoid scheduling delays. They suggested a start in early or mid-October and estimated that the new trial would last about three weeks.
Storm remains free on bail while the case is pending.
A mixed policy shift in Washington
The hearing request comes at a time when the federal government is shifting its stance toward digital assets.
Last year, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche released a memo saying the Justice Department “is not a regulator of digital assets.” The guideline instructed prosecutors to avoid cases that try to enforce regulatory bodies with criminal cases of platforms, wallets, and similar infrastructure.
The memo also warned against targeting developers for the behavior of users interacting with decentralized tools.
At the same time, the US Treasury Department is softening its language on privacy tools for public blockchains. In a March 2026 report to Congress under the GENIUS Act, Treasury acknowledged that digital asset aggregators can serve legitimate purposes.
According to the report, legitimate users may rely on such tools to protect sensitive financial information, including personal wealth, business payments, charitable donations, and consumer spending patterns.
Storm helped create Tornado Cash in 2019 as a privacy protocol for the Ethereum network. Unlike security mixers, the protocol works with smart contracts rather than a centralized service operator.
Roman Storm: Criminalizing coding
Storm’s defense emphasized that developers cannot control how distributed software is used after deployment.
In a statement to X following news of the retrial request, Storm said the original jury heard four weeks of testimony before failing to reach a consensus on two of the most serious charges.
He wrote: “A jury of 12 Americans heard four weeks of testimony and died. “There is no verdict on money laundering. There is no decision regarding sanctions violations.”
Storm framed the retrial effort as an attempt to redefine the legal status of the code.
“The government’s response?” he wrote. “Try again to make writing code a crime.”
