The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested a retrial for Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, following a hung jury on two serious charges: conspiracy to commit money laundering and violation of U.S. sanctions. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. The retrial is scheduled to begin in October 2026, even as the policy winds within the federal government are subtly shifting.
In August 2025, a Manhattan, New York jury partially convicted Storm of operating an “unlicensed money transmitting business,” which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years. However, the jury failed to reach a consensus on the other two more serious charges, resulting in a mistrial and a retrial. Meanwhile, Storm's defense team has filed a motion challenging the sufficiency of the evidence for the initial conviction, with a hearing scheduled for April 9.
Notably, just days after the Justice Department filed its request for a retrial, the U.S. Treasury Department submitted a 32-page report to Congress explicitly acknowledging the legitimate uses of cryptocurrency mixing services in protecting the privacy of legitimate users. The report did not recommend imposing new restrictions on non-custodial mixers and abandoned the previously controversial 2023 proposal to retain transaction records, arguing that it could make it difficult for decentralized protocols to operate legally.
This policy statement stands in stark contrast to the Justice Department's prosecution: on one hand, a government agency recognizes the legitimate value of mixing technology, while on the other, it uses severe penalties to deter developers. Industry organizations such as the Solana Policy Institute and the DeFi News Education Fund have expressed disappointment, pointing out that a jury of twelve ordinary citizens could not confirm that his actions constituted a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which in itself is a strong challenge to the strength of the prosecution's evidence.
Tornado Cash is essentially a non-custodial blockchain mixing protocol. Storm did not hold user funds or operate transactions on their behalf, but only developed and deployed open-source code that allowed users to hide transaction paths. The core of the dispute is whether developers should be held criminally liable for the misuse of their open-source tools by others, especially when the tool cannot distinguish between legitimate and illegal uses.
The split verdict in the first trial shows that at least some jurors were hesitant to apply money laundering and sanctions regulations to technology developers. This case is not only about the fate of one person, but also about defining the boundaries of responsibility in the decentralized world – whether technological neutrality can still serve as a cornerstone of legal protection.