Storm's acquittal motion has sat undecided for a year while his retrial slips to 2027

Roman Storm, a developer of Tornado Cash, stated that Chainalysis assisted prosecutors in tracking his transactions. He pointed out that the same firm was earning fees as a Tornado Cash relayer in 2022.

He made the point on X on Tuesday, hours after a federal judge pushed his second trial deep into 2027. The developer is currently facing a retrial on money-laundering and sanctions charges.

The double-standard claim Storm is making

Storm’s complaint is based on the relayer, which is an intermediary service that enables people to withdraw funds from a crypto mixer without revealing their wallet addresses.

Storm says the court records in his case show Chainalysis provided just that type of service to Tornado Cash in 2022 and earned fees for doing so.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, helped the U.S. government assemble the case against Storm.

“So the company that helped trace my ‘criminal’ transactions was itself profiting from Tornado Cash transactions, while I was prosecuted over software I helped create,” Storm wrote.

“Prosecutors are supposed to protect American interests and go after people who broke the law,” he wrote on X.

“A jury deadlocked on the two most serious counts against me. And still SDNY won’t stop, because this case was never just about me. It’s about setting an example.”

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla, on the same Tuesday, pushed Storm’s retrial to April 26, 2027, with a final pretrial conference scheduled for April 20 at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Manhattan.

The trial had previously been set for October 26, 2026.

The delay follows from a defense motion filed on August 3. Storm’s attorneys told the judge they would need at least 90 days after the court ruling on his acquittal motion to prepare for another trial.

The prosecutors opposed the adjournment. Failla granted it, however, citing the pending motion and the related request for a continuance.

One undecided motion has held the case for a year

The motion for acquittal has been pending for approximately one year. It was filed in September 2025, an oral argument was heard in April, and there’s been no decision.

“My acquittal motion is still sitting there, undecided,” Storm said on X. “I honestly don’t know when this ends.”

The retrial re-covers ground left open by the first jury. A jury in Manhattan convicted Storm in August 2025 of conspiracy to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years.

The jurors were deadlocked on two other serious charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions. Prosecutors want to try again on both counts.

A guilty verdict on those counts could put Storm away for as much as 40 years.

According to the docket, the case of United States v. Storm, filed in the Southern District of New York in August 2023 and assigned to Judge Failla, has been ongoing for three years, from Storm’s arrest in Washington state through his not-guilty plea and a $2 million recognizance bond. His co-founder, Roman Semenov, who has been charged alongside him, remains at large.

Storm supporters have portrayed the prosecution as a test case of whether writing code is a crime. As Cryptopolitan has reported, the Solana Policy Institute pledged $500,000 toward the defense of the Tornado Cash founders in 2025.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly backed Storm before a past hearing, calling privacy “necessary for many parts of our society.”

Storm’s lawyers also pointed the court to a recent Supreme Court decision that said internet service provider Cox wasn’t responsible for customers who pirated music. They said that this reasoning should protect a developer from how other people use their tool.

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