Roman Storm

The Southern District of New York is pressing forward with its money laundering case against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm even as the Treasury’s financial-crime unit walks away from its own crackdown on crypto mixers. For institutional investors evaluating custody providers, privacy-preserving protocols or AML exposure, the split shows that criminal liability for mixer operators no longer depends on whether a parallel rulemaking survives.

• SDNY filed a letter on October 5 invoking the September 25 Sterlingov appeals ruling to defend venue on two charges Storm still faces.
• FinCEN’s Tuesday notice, signed by Deputy Director Jimmy L. Kirby, moved on from its 2023 and 2020 mixer proposals.
• Storm’s retrial on deadlocked money laundering and sanctions counts is set for April 26, 2027, carrying up to 40 years in prison.

• $1B in criminal proceeds Tornado Cash moved, per DOJ’s own count
• 1,139 days Storm has spent in custody since his arrest
• 40 yrs maximum term on retrial counts versus 5 years on his conviction

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Roman Storm, a co-founder of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, knowingly operated an unlicensed money transmitting business that moved more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds, according to the office’s press release announcing his conviction in August 2025. Tornado Cash lets users pool crypto deposits from many wallets and withdraw them from different addresses, severing the on-chain link between sender and receiver, a feature prosecutors say North Korea’s Lazarus Group exploited to launder proceeds of the Ronin hack.

Roman Storm and Tornado Cash provided a service for North Korean hackers and other criminals to move and hide more than $1 billion of dirty money.

Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York

That case took on fresh urgency on October 5, when SDNY prosecutors advanced new arguments in a letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. The filing came a day after