Federal prosecutors are citing a recent appeals court ruling in the Bitcoin Fog case as supplemental authority in their opposition to Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s motion for acquittal. The move injects a fresh appellate precedent into a case that hinges in part on whether a single user’s activity in Manhattan is enough to anchor the charges in New York.

In a filing submitted Monday in the Southern District of New York, prosecutors argued that the Sept. 25 decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit supports their position on venue in Storm’s case. The appellate court upheld the convictions and sentence of Roman Sterlingov, who operated the Bitcoin Fog cryptocurrency mixer. While rulings from one federal appeals circuit do not bind district courts in another, they can be cited as persuasive support on an open legal question.

The government’s filing is available here.

What the Bitcoin Fog ruling said

The D.C. Circuit held that Washington, D.C., was the proper venue for all four counts against Sterlingov. Venue refers to the location where a criminal case may legally be tried, and counts brought in an improper district are subject to dismissal regardless of the strength of the evidence.

For the money-laundering counts, the court relied on evidence that an undercover agent conducted Bitcoin Fog transactions from his office in Washington, D.C. For the unlicensed money-transmission counts, the court found sufficient evidence that Bitcoin Fog had served customers in the district. In both instances, the court anchored venue in where users engaged with the service — the same theory the government now applies to Storm.

Federal prosecutors said the ruling “directly supports” their arguments against Storm’s acquittal motion. They maintain that Tornado Cash activity in Manhattan was sufficient to establish venue in New York for Storm’s money-laundering and unlicensed money-transmission conspiracy charges.

Prosecutors pointed to testimony from Shakeeb Ahmed, who said he used Tornado Cash from his apartment in Manhattan.

Dispute over New York venue

In his 2025 motion for acquittal, Storm argued that Ahmed’s use of Tornado Cash did not establish venue because the transactions did not further the alleged conspiracy.

Prosecutors rejected that argument. They said that even short-lived deposits can benefit a cryptocurrency mixer by adding to the pool of transactions used to conceal the movement of funds. In the government’s view, that reasoning applies to Ahmed’s activity and indicates that his use of Tornado Cash furthered the alleged conspiracy.

A jury convicted Storm in August 2025 of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The jury deadlocked on the money-laundering and sanctions conspiracy charges.

Storm filed his post-trial acquittal motion in September 2025, arguing that prosecutors had failed to prove that he intended to help criminals misuse Tornado Cash. Judge Katherine Polk Failla heard arguments on the motion in April 2026 and has not yet issued a ruling.

A retrial on the deadlocked counts is scheduled for April 26, 2027, if those charges remain pending.

Storm criticized the government’s new filing in a post on X on Monday. “The DOJ is still coming after me with everything it has,” he wrote.

October 5, 2026 A new letter was filed today by SDNY: The DOJ is still coming after me with everything it has. They really want to see me convicted. It has been 1,139 days since my nightmare began. They arrested me when my daughter was just 3 years old,… — Roman Storm (@rstormsf) October 6, 2026

He also referred to the Treasury Department’s announcement Monday that it would withdraw its proposed crypto-mixer rule, a step that stops the proposal short of becoming a final rule. Storm argued that the government is taking conflicting approaches to cryptocurrency privacy tools.

The original report was published by Blockonomi.