The legal pressure on Roman Storm does not subside. American federal prosecutors refuse to abandon the Tornado Cash case and are, for the moment, closing the door to a rapid exit for its co-founder. The signal sent to the crypto market remains clear from the start. Even after a trial partially blocked in 2025, even after the change of tone displayed by the Ministry of Justice on certain files linked to digital assets, the federal camp continues to move forward.
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In brief
- American justice does not let go of Roman Storm.
- The Tornado Cash case remains a major test for open source crypto.
- The outcome of the trial could have a lasting impact on the industry.
A file that refuses to close
The Storm affair therefore does not slide into oblivion. It returns to the center of the debate on the responsibility of developers in the face of the criminal use of their code. The heart of the story comes down to a simple sentence: Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say Roman Storm’s defense warrants neither dropping the charges nor broadening his acquittal. In their recent response, they reject the idea that a Supreme Court ruling on copyright could weaken their case criminal.
Storm had nevertheless tried to use the stop Cox v. Sony Music Entertainment as support. In this decision of March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court tightened the logic of contributory liability in matters of copyright, recalling that a service provider can only be held responsible if it wanted to encourage the infringement, or if its service was adapted to this infringement.
But for parquet, the parallel does not hold. Prosecutors say this civil case over copyright infringement is unlike the Tornado Cash case, where the issue concerns alleged money laundering and sanctions. In other words, Storm is trying to open a doctrinal breach, while the prosecution brings the debate back to pure criminal territory.
Why the Storm affair remains explosive for crypto
This file goes far beyond the personal case of Roman Storm. In August 2025, a jury convicted him of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. On the other hand, this same jury failed to decide on two much more serious counts: conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate sanctions.
This is precisely where the political and legal tension intensifies. For part of the ecosystem, the case poses a formidable question: to what extent can a developer be held responsible for an open source protocol that it no longer really controls once deployed? For the prosecution, the answer lies less in theory than in intention, knowledge of criminal practices and the absence of safeguards deemed effective.
The DOJ has also been recalling its reading of the file for a long time. In its August 2025 press release, the SDNY prosecutor’s office claimed that the crypto platform Tornado Cash had facilitated more than a billion dollars in illicit transactions, with presumed knowledge of several criminal uses, including flows linked to the North Korean group Lazarus. This narrative basis remains visibly intact.
