Roman Storm convicted in Tornado Cash case, but jury balks at key DOJ claims

The Roman Storm trial ended with a partial victory for the prosecutors, but not the radical conviction that they sought. Sentenced for having directed a silver issuer without license, he avoided a more overwhelming result because the jurors could not agree that the Tornado Cash was a tool for criminals or simply a code concerned with privacy.

The verdict fell on August 6, while downtown the press reported. A Manhattan jury made a shared decision in the case against the creator of Tornado Cash Roman Storm.

While condemning it of the exploitation of a silver issuer without license, the jurors remained strongly divided after four days of deliberation to know if Storm intentionally allowed financial crimes. For prosecutors, it is a technical victory that lacks their ultimate goal: to prove that the developer knowingly built his Ethereum mixer to hide illicit funds.

A fractured verdict reveals limits of cryptographic proceedings

Observers according to the trial was not shocked when the jurors took place on the heavier accusations, in particular money laundering and infringements to sanctions. The prosecutors showed how Tornado Cash had managed the funds of the Lazarus group, but the Storm team has efficiently countered, arguing that the protocol took place independently, leaving the helpless developers to stop the transactions.

The jury’s struggle with this technical distinction became clear during deliberations. Some panelists did not seem convinced that the simple fact of writing code could represent a criminal plot. After days of tense debate, they sent to judge Katherine Failla a note admitting that they were desperately stuck on the first and third counts.

Failla delivered the Allen accusation, a judicial investigation rarely used urging the juries in the deadlock to continue to deliberate. However, the panel quickly returned with their shared decision: the conviction on the count of the transmission of money, but the disagreement on more serious allegations.

This case to expose how disorderly it becomes when legal frameworks-centuries collide with decentralized code.

Barely the verdict had been read that the prosecutors jumped, the demanding storm was immediately imprisoned. They made a sign around his Russian passport, underlined suspicious discussions of telegram on asylum and underlined the $ 12 million of Ethereum linked to his fugitive partner Semenov, painting Storm as a risk of rich flight which was only waiting to disappear.

But the defense presented a different story. Keri Axel, the Storm lawyer, argued that his client had cooperated with the authorities since the sanctions in 2022, voluntarily assisted the office sessions and rendering his passport. She underlined her five-year-old daughter, her family in the United States and her house in the state of Washington obtained on bond as proof of community ties.

Axel also noted that Storm cryptographic wallets were limited under the judicial order, with authorized access only for tax payments. “This is not a risk of theft. It came out of all this time without incident,” she told Judge Failla.

In the end, the court has signed on the defense side, allowing Storm to stay free to endorse while the government considers its next decision. Prosecutors have not announced if they would try it again on the suspended counts, although they have kept the right to do so. In the meantime, the world of cryptography is looking closely.