Roman Storm’s legal fight is moving into a new and potentially defining phase after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York asked the court on to reject his motion to dismiss and move ahead with a retrial on the unresolved Tornado Cash charges. The government is also pushing for a start date in October 2026, signaling that it wants the case back before a jury rather than narrowed or delayed.
The filing makes clear that prosecutors do not view the defense’s latest legal theory as a meaningful obstacle. In their telling, Storm’s attempt to rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music does not undermine the core question in this case, which is whether he acted with criminal intent while operating software that prosecutors say facilitated large-scale illicit flows.
Prosecutors are trying to keep the focus on intent and control
Storm is already facing a split outcome from the earlier trial. He was convicted in August 2025 on the count tied to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while the jury failed to reach verdicts on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions. It is those two unresolved counts that prosecutors now want to retry.
In the new filing, the government argues that the defense is trying to import a civil-liability framework into a criminal case where it does not belong. Prosecutors described that argument in unusually blunt terms, calling parts of it “window dressing at best and outright misdirection at worst.” Their position is that even if Tornado Cash had lawful privacy uses, that fact alone does not answer whether the people behind it knowingly allowed or enabled criminal conduct.
The filing also returns to the operational design of Tornado Cash itself. Prosecutors say the protocol lacked meaningful anti-money-laundering controls and that those shortcomings helped enable more than $1 billion in illicit transfers, including transactions linked to sanctioned actors. That point is central to the government’s effort to show that the platform was not merely neutral code in the abstract, but software allegedly run in a way that carried criminal consequences.
The defense is still arguing for technological neutrality
Storm’s legal team is trying to draw a narrower line around developer responsibility. Its argument is that writing or maintaining open-source privacy software should not automatically expose someone to criminal liability for the actions of third parties who later use that software. From that perspective, Tornado Cash may have been abused, but that does not by itself establish culpable intent on the part of its developers.
That is why the defense has leaned on Cox Communications v. Sony Music in the first place. The broader goal is to argue that there is a meaningful difference between a tool being misused and a developer criminally intending that misuse. Prosecutors, however, are pressing the court to reject that distinction in this context and let a jury decide whether the evidence shows something more than technological neutrality.
The stakes now extend far beyond one retrial calendar. If the government succeeds on the remaining counts, the case could become one of the clearest precedents yet for how U.S. prosecutors approach developer liability in decentralized privacy protocols. If Storm ultimately prevails on the theory his lawyers are advancing, it would strengthen the position that open-source infrastructure should not be treated as criminal simply because unlawful users pass through it.
Prosecutors want the retrial to begin in October 2026, while the defense has told the court it will not be available until September, meaning the next scheduling decision could shape the pace of one of crypto’s most consequential legal battles.