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A split verdict left the hardest questions unanswered. With a retrial proposed and an acquittal motion pending, United States v. Storm remains the defining test of whether writing code can be a crime.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Hon. Katherine Polk Failla)
The prosecution of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm has become the defining test of whether—and how—the federal criminal law reaches those who write software for decentralized financial protocols. Storm was charged in connection with a non-custodial cryptocurrency mixer that obscures the trail of blockchain transactions and that the government alleges was used to launder more than a billion dollars, including funds tied to North Korean hacking operations. The indictment charged conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business under 18 U.S.C. § 1960, conspiracy to commit money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956, and conspiracy to violate sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The first trial, in August 2025, produced a split result that left the central questions unanswered. A jury convicted Storm on the Section 1960 count—operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business—but deadlocked on the money-laundering and sanctions counts, resulting in a partial mistrial on the two charges that carry the heaviest exposure. Storm's defense has maintained throughout that he authored open-source code for a protocol he did not control and never took custody of user funds, framing the prosecution as an attempt to criminalize software development itself.
The case is now in an unusually layered posture. The government has moved to retry Storm on the two deadlocked counts, proposing dates in October 2026, while Storm's Rule 29 motion for a judgment of acquittal remains pending before Judge Failla following argument in the spring of 2026. That motion presses both a substantive theory—that keeping a decentralized protocol running and pushing software updates cannot amount to the charged conduct—and a venue challenge questioning whether the Southern District of New York was the proper forum. Sentencing on the Section 1960 conviction has yet to occur, and its timing relative to any retrial remains open.
The prosecution proceeds against a shifting policy backdrop. Federal authorities have publicly signaled a retreat from "regulation by prosecution" of digital-asset infrastructure and have acknowledged that privacy-preserving tools have lawful uses—positions that sit uneasily beside a decision to retry a developer on charges exposing him to decades in prison. That tension between stated enforcement policy and litigation conduct is itself part of the case's significance.
At its core, United States v. Storm asks whether writing and maintaining code that others use for unlawful ends can support criminal liability, and how the money-transmission statutes apply to software that never touches customer funds. The answer will reverberate across the decentralized-finance sector, where developers have watched the case as a referendum on the legal status of the code they publish.
Track this case with PacerPlus. United States v. Storm sits in an unusually layered posture — a pending acquittal motion, a proposed October retrial, and sentencing still to come. Use pacerplus.com to monitor the docket in real time, get plain-English summaries of every new filing and order, and ask questions about the record and the issues — then turn on PACEAlert to be notified the moment a ruling, filing, or scheduling change lands.