Roman Storm’s Acquittal Fight Delays Tornado Cash Retrial

• Roman Storm’s retrial has been postponed from October 2026 to April 26, 2027.
• His motion for acquittal remains unresolved after arguments earlier this year.
• Prosecutors plan to retry two charges on which the first jury deadlocked.

The delay gives both sides additional time to address post-trial motions and prepare for a second trial.

A federal judge has postponed Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm’s retrial until April 26, 2027, extending one of the crypto industry’s most closely watched criminal cases while the court considers his pending motion for acquittal. The new schedule pushes back a retrial that had been set for October and leaves unresolved whether

Storm will face a second jury on money laundering and sanctions-related charges.

Why the Court Moved Storm’s Retrial to April 2027

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla issued the order on August 25 in the Southern District of New York.

The court directly cited two factors: Storm’s pending motion for acquittal and his related request to move the retrial into late April 2027. The new trial is scheduled to begin on April 26 at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in New York.

The court also excluded the period through the new trial date from calculations under the Speedy Trial Act. Judge Failla found that giving the parties and the court additional time to consider Storm’s post-trial motions and prepare for the retrial outweighed the interests served by holding it sooner.

The revised schedule now sets several deadlines:

• February 5, 2027: Government expert disclosures
• March 5: Defense expert disclosures
• March 18: Rebuttal expert disclosures
• March 30: Daubert motions and motions in limine
• April 9: Oppositions to the March 30 motions
• April 20: Final pretrial conference
• April 26: Retrial begins

The calendar provides substantially more preparation time, but the more immediate legal question comes before those deadlines: what Judge Failla decides on Storm’s pending acquittal motion.

The Acquittal Motion Could Reshape the Case Before Retrial

Storm’s defense filed a Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal after his first trial. Oral arguments were held in April 2026, but the court has yet to rule.

According to Cornell Law School, a Rule 29 motion asks the judge to determine whether the prosecution presented legally sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. It therefore differs from simply asking another jury to reconsider the facts.

That distinction gives the current delay greater significance than an ordinary scheduling change.

Storm was convicted in August 2025 of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, an offense carrying a maximum sentence of five years. The jury, however, could not reach unanimous verdicts on the two more serious allegations: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions.

Those unresolved counts are the basis for the planned retrial.

Each carries a potential maximum sentence of 20 years, meaning the charges returning to court carry substantially greater potential penalties than the count on which Storm was already convicted.

Storm’s Split Verdict Left the Hardest Questions Unresolved

The first trial lasted four weeks and produced a result that gave neither side a complete victory.

Prosecutors secured a conviction on the money-transmission count, arguing that Storm knowingly participated in operating Tornado Cash as an unlicensed money transmitting business. The Justice Department said the service transmitted more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds.

Jurors were less convinced on the government’s broader theories.

They deadlocked on allegations that Storm conspired to launder proceeds from hacks and conspired to violate sanctions, including allegations involving funds connected to the North Korean Lazarus Group.

That division matters because the unresolved counts require the government to establish more than the money-transmission violation for which Storm was convicted.

The retrial therefore is not simply a repeat of the first case. Prosecutors will return to the two allegations that failed to produce unanimous verdicts, while Storm’s lawyers enter the second trial knowing where the first jury was unwilling to reach agreement.

Why the Case Matters Beyond Tornado Cash

The broader significance of United States v. Storm comes from the difficult boundary it tests between software development and responsibility for how decentralized software is subsequently used.

Tornado Cash was designed to obscure the public blockchain connection between deposits and withdrawals, providing transaction privacy on Ethereum. Prosecutors argued that Storm and his co-founders went beyond merely publishing software and knowingly operated a service that processed criminal proceeds. Storm’s defense has maintained that the software itself was neutral and that developers should not be held criminally responsible for independent users’ conduct.

The first verdict did not fully resolve that conflict.

The money-transmission conviction demonstrated that a jury was willing to impose criminal liability under one theory of the government’s case. At the same time, the deadlock on money laundering and sanctions violations showed that proving knowledge and responsibility for the more serious conduct presented a higher hurdle.

For developers of decentralized protocols, that distinction is more useful than treating the case as a simple referendum on whether writing code creates criminal liability.

The eventual legal significance will depend on which specific activities courts determine can transform software development into participation in a regulated or unlawful financial service.

A Supreme Court Decision Has Entered Storm’s Defense

Another issue could influence the next phase before jurors ever return to the courtroom.

Storm’s lawyers have pointed Judge Failla to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving internet provider Cox Communications and copyright infringement by its customers. The Supreme Court rejected part of the theory used to hold Cox responsible for providing services that customers subsequently misused. Storm’s defense has argued that the reasoning could have implications for determining when a technology provider can be held responsible for third-party conduct.

The cases arise under different areas of law, so the Supreme Court decision does not automatically dictate the outcome of Storm’s criminal prosecution.

Its relevance instead lies in the broader question of intent and secondary responsibility: how much knowledge of misuse, combined with continued provision of a service, is sufficient to establish liability?

Judge Failla’s treatment of that argument could provide additional guidance before the retrial.

April Is Not the Next Date That Matters

The April 26 retrial now anchors the court calendar, but the pending Rule 29 decision remains the more immediate development.

A ruling on Storm’s post-trial motions could alter the legal landscape well before expert disclosures begin in February. The August 25 order itself makes that sequence clear by identifying the unresolved motions as one reason additional time is necessary.

The second issue to watch is how prosecutors refine the two charges that produced a deadlocked jury in 2025. A retrial gives the government an opportunity to adjust how it presents evidence, while the defense now has direct insight into which parts of the original case failed to secure unanimous agreement.

That makes the six-month postponement strategically meaningful for both sides. The next major development is therefore likely to come not from the April trial itself, but from Judge Failla’s ruling on the acquittal motion that helped push the case there.