Roman Storm Seeks Funds as Tornado Cash Trial Begins in Manhattan

Highlights:

• Roman Storm has requested urgent donations as his Tornado Cash trial begins.
• Defense lawyers have stated that prosecutors used a wrongly attributed Telegram message as evidence in the trial.
• Privacy supporters have called on the DOJ to drop the case in whole.

Roman Storm, the co-founder of Tornado Cash, is set to appear in court today as his criminal trial begins in Manhattan. Storm has requested $500,000 in donations to support his legal defense in one of the most anticipated cases in the crypto community. His team now expects the trial to last four weeks instead of the originally planned two. Storm shared that the legal fund faces a $1.5 million shortfall and called on the crypto community and privacy advocates to help fund expert witnesses, legal research, and other defense costs.

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📢 📢 @TornadoCash Co-Founder Roman Storm Seeks Urgent $500,000 in Legal Funds Ahead of Trial

🚨Roman Storm urgently needs $500K for legal fees as his criminal trial over Tornado Cash begins in New York.

🚀Legal costs have surged to $3.5M due to new witnesses, extended… pic.twitter.com/sUCufmEDzB

— UnoCrypto (@unocrypto_com) July 14, 2025

His team created a website to collect donations. Storm has described his situation as urgent and emphasized that the case could affect software development and civil rights. Prosecutors have charged him with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They have also charged him with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

The Department of Justice claims that Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency tumbler that runs on Ethereum, laundered over $1 billion. The DOJ claims some of the funds are tied to the notorious North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Prosecutors say Storm let users exploit the platform illegally and did not apply proper controls. Storm has denied all charges and said that Tornado Cash works as a decentralized, non-custodial protocol. His defense team argues that the protocol’s smart contracts run on their own once deployed.

Tornado Cash Trial Evidence Dispute Draws Court Attention

Just before the trial began, Storm’s lawyers challenged the accuracy of the evidence presented by prosecutors. A key dispute involves a Telegram message referencing the $600 million hack of Axie Infinity. The message asked how someone could cash out $600 million, and the prosecution used the message to show criminal intent. They claimed that Alexey Pertsev, who was sentenced by a Dutch court, had written the message.

Roman Storm's defense accuses federal prosecutors of mishandling key evidence before his trial. A Telegram message, central to the case, was misattributed to his co-developer instead of a reporter. This raises concerns about the government's evidence chain.

— Yeti Fi (@YetiFAi) July 14, 2025

However, Storm’s lawyers revealed that the message came from Andrew Thurman, a former CoinDesk reporter. Pertsev, one of the developers of the platform, had only forwarded the message to a Tornado Cash chat. The Dutch police extracted the original message from Pertsev’s phone after his arrest. He later received a 64-month sentence for money laundering through Tornado Cash.

The defense team of Storm questioned the way the Dutch police had gone about extracting the phone. They claimed that the evidence fed to the FBI was not complete on who wrote the messages.

During a pretrial hearing in July, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Arad referred to the message. He told the judge that it showed awareness of laundering stolen funds. Storm’s lawyers argued that this statement gave the court and grand jury inaccurate information. They believe the mistake shows poor handling of the government’s own evidence.

Implications for Developers and Crypto Legal Standards

The trial of Roman Storm may establish a judicial precedent that might affect other crypto cases. The result can also influence the treatment of decentralized financial tools by the courts. Other organizations like Coin Center and the Blockchain Association have submitted supporting briefs. Meanwhile, the prosecutors dropped some of the charges in May as privacy supporters called for the whole case to be dropped.

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