US prosecutors oppose moving Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash case to another court

The US government wants the Tornado Cash case to stay in the Southern District of New York, and it is leaning on prior crypto-mixer jurisdiction rulings to make that case. For high-risk payments and crypto infrastructure players, the practical point is simple: if a service touched even one user in a district, prosecutors are arguing that may be enough to keep the case there.

1. In an objection dated 5 October, published by Roman Storm himself, prosecutors pointed to a 2026 appeal in US v. Sterlingov. That court held that if a crypto mixer served at least one customer in a particular district, that was enough to hear the case there.
2. Roman Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for laundering funds through the darknet mixer Bitcoin Fog. From 2011 to 2021, the service processed transactions involving roughly 1.2 million bitcoin, or about $400 million.
3. In the Tornado Cash case, prosecutors are also relying on testimony from witness Shakeeb Ahmed, who used the mixer from an apartment in Manhattan. His contribution reportedly stayed in the mixer for only a couple of days, but the prosecution’s position is that this was enough to establish venue in the district.
4. A retrial in the Southern District of New York is scheduled for 26 April in the $1 billion money-laundering and sanctions-violations case against Roman Storm. The first jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. If he is convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison.
5. In August 2025, a New York jury found Storm guilty in a separate case: conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. His defence says Tornado Cash is immutable software and that, once deployed, it was no longer under his control. The lawyers argue that the mixer can be used to launder illicit funds and evade sanctions, but that Storm, as a developer, had no legal duty or technical ability to stop that.

Storm’s defence also says he has little chance of an acquittal in New York. The district has already handled, or is handling, cases involving the collapsed crypto exchange FTX and the crypto platform Celsius — which tells you enough about the venue’s current appetite for crypto proceedings.