On July 11, 2025, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) carried out a final status conference hearing regarding the Tornado Cash case, with the trial set to commence on July 14, 2025.

I (essentially) went to the final status conf. for the Tornado Cash case today. (I appeared for the in-individual hearing, however it was altered to a virtual one.)

Here’s what I found out from the final convo btw the judge, the prosecution, & the defense before trial starts on Monday: pic.twitter.com/iiqBWK7NFq

— Frank Corva (@frankcorva) July 11, 2025

The hearing, carried out essentially, was participated in by Judge Katherine Polk Failla, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, as well as members from both the defense and prosecution groups.

Mr. Storm deals with 3 charges: conspiracy to devote cash laundering, conspiracy to run an unlicensed cash sending service, and conspiracy to devote sanctions offenses.

The main topics resolved during the hearing consisted of:

• The reasoning for the New York court serving as the place for the trial.
• Mr. Storm’s impact over a Bloomberg press reporter regarding a March 2020 short article about Tornado Cash.
• The implications of the actions taken by Tornado Cash co-founders and designers in relation to the conspiracies laid out in Mr. Storm’s indictment.
• The admissibility of information drawn out from the phone of co-founder Alexey Pertsev.
• Judge Failla’s intent to focus on the functional elements of Storm’s for-earnings service instead of the specifics of Tornado Cash’s cryptocurrency mixing software application.

Prior to diving into these subjects, Judge Failla offered important information worrying the trial’s procedures.

Trial Details

The trial is arranged to commence on Monday early morning at 9:30 AM EST, with jury choice as one of the preliminary products on the program.

Judge Failla stressed that the trial will not be tape-recorded, broadcast, or rebroadcast; nevertheless, protection will be offered for most sessions.

Furthermore, Judge Failla revealed a desire for the trial to conclude within 3 weeks, although she acknowledged the possibility that it may extend beyond that timeline due to individual responsibilities in early August.

Opening declarations are prepared for to take place on Tuesday, July 15.

Venue Justification for the Tornado Cash Trial

The prosecution suggested that the trial is being held in the SDNY since Mr. Storm run a site assisting in Tornado Cash deals from New York City for a specific duration.

Additionally, the prosecution declared that Mr. Storm often interacted with a equity capital principal based in New York who had actually moneyed Tornado Cash and that these interactions extended beyond simple financing demands.

Mr. Storm’s Interaction with a Bloomberg Reporter

In March 2020, Mr. Storm apparently called a Bloomberg press reporter to convince them to modify a unfavorable representation of Tornado Cash in their short article.

The prosecution asserted that this intervention rendered the report incorrect, while the defense countered that Mr. Storm simply intended to help with “appropriate corrections.” Mr. Storm refrained from commenting during the hearing.

Implications for the Charged Conspiracies

The prosecution recommended that the actions taken by Mr. Storm and his co-founders to run a for-earnings service using Tornado Cash innovation supported the conspiracies laid out in the indictment.

One example mentioned by the prosecution included motivating U.S.-based users to use Tornado Cash, therefore increasing the swimming pool of capital socialized with funds from North Korean hackers, which helped with anonymization.

In response, Judge Failla queried the prosecution, asking for information on whether they thought that the efforts made by the Tornado Cash co-founders to sustain their service straight contributed to the conspiracies charged against Mr. Storm. This yielded a minute of doubt from the prosecution, leading to a movement from the defense to dismiss the indictment based on absence of place, a demand that Judge Failla immediately rejected.

Graykey Data Extraction Update

During the hearing, Judge Failla talked about the extraction of information from Mr. Pertsev’s phone, who was sentenced to 5 years in jail in the Netherlands for his connection to Tornado Cash.

The judge looked for input from both the prosecution and defense regarding the admissibility of the drawn out information, postponing her decision up until the trial. She asked for both celebrations to evaluation the information and the extraction procedure, with strategies to address the matter during the procedures.

Trial Focus and Structure

Judge Failla clarified that the preliminary focus of the trial would not focus on Tornado Cash as a mixing service, however rather on the site and frontend abilities established by Mr. Storm to help with deals. “We will not emphasize crypto mixing,” mentioned the judge, while waiting for a response from the defense regarding previous submissions about crypto mixing services.

Witnesses and In Limine Motions

Discussions during the hearing also included matters associated to witnesses in the case and particular movements in limine, which pertain to proof considered unimportant, prejudicial, or inadmissible.

While particular witness names were not revealed, the prosecution kept in mind the recognition of “witness #1” and subsequent interviews. The judge acknowledged the defense’s demand to omit specific products worrying this witness and stressed that witnesses ought to not go over individual psychological tension resulting from the freezing of their funds through Tornado Cash, however rather focus on whether they looked for help from the Tornado Cash group for unfrozen access to their properties.

Omissions from the Hearing

Notably, the hearing did not address the current elimination of Tornado Cash from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list, nor did it point out the termination of Coin Center’s appeal associated to this matter.

This short article, “Insights from the Final Status Conference Hearing in the Tornado Cash Case,” was at first released in Bitcoin Magazine by Frank Corva.

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