Roman Storm’s retrial postponed to April 26, 2027

Roman Storm, co-founder of the Ethereum-based privacy mixer Tornado Cash, will have to wait until at least April 2027 before facing a jury again. US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ordered the postponement on August 25, 2026, citing Storm’s still-pending motion for acquittal, a motion that has sat without a ruling for nearly a year.

The retrial, originally targeted for October 2026, now carries a start date of April 26, 2027.

What happened at trial, and what’s still unresolved

Storm went to trial in the summer of 2025 on three federal charges in the Southern District of New York, case number 23 Cr. 430. The jury convicted him on one count: conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The other two counts were far more serious. Charges related to money laundering conspiracy and sanctions violations each carry potential sentences of up to 20 years. On those, the jury deadlocked, unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Prosecutors decided not to let it go. They opted to retry Storm on those unresolved counts.

Storm’s defense team filed a Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal on September 30, 2025, essentially arguing that the government’s evidence was insufficient to support the conviction. Oral arguments on the motion were heard on April 9, 2026.

As of the August 2026 court order, Judge Failla had not issued a ruling. That unresolved motion became the primary reason for pushing the retrial back.

Why April 2027

The defense team specifically requested that the retrial not be scheduled earlier than April 2027, citing scheduling conflicts. Prosecutors opposed the continuance, preferring to move forward on the earlier October 2026 timeline. Judge Failla sided with the defense.

The court reset the entire pretrial calendar accordingly. Expert disclosures are now due in early 2027, and the final pretrial conference is set for April 20, 2027, just six days before the trial is slated to begin.

If Judge Failla grants the Rule 29 motion, it could overturn Storm’s existing conviction on the money transmitting charge. If she denies it, the defense still gets the benefit of time to prepare for the retrial on the money laundering and sanctions counts.

The bigger picture for crypto developers

Tornado Cash is a smart contract protocol on Ethereum that allows users to pool and withdraw funds in a way that breaks the on-chain link between sender and receiver. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, claiming it was involved in over $1 billion of illicit financial activity, particularly aiding sanctioned entities.

Storm’s case centers on whether developers can be held criminally liable for building a decentralized protocol that others misuse. The prosecution’s theory is that Storm and his co-founders didn’t just write code. They allegedly maintained, promoted, and profited from a service they knew was being used for illicit purposes.

The jury’s split verdict in 2025 reflects the contested nature of the case: jurors convicted on the money transmitting charge but could not agree on the more severe allegations.

A conviction on the money laundering or sanctions counts would establish that developers of privacy-preserving protocols can face decades in prison for the actions of their users. Projects focused on privacy operate under regulatory ambiguity, and investors evaluating tokens like TORN, Tornado Cash’s governance token, face legal risk that remains unquantified.

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