Roman Storm’s retrial on unresolved Tornado Cash money laundering and sanctions charges has been postponed to April 26, 2027, pushing the case back six months as a federal judge considers his request for acquittal.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla entered the new date on August 25 after Storm’s defense asked for an April setting, or at least 90 days between a ruling on his Rule 29 motion and any retrial. The case had previously been scheduled for October 26.

Acquittal Motion Could Affect the Retrial

Storm was convicted in August 2025 of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business after a four-week trial in Manhattan.

Jurors did not reach unanimous verdicts on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, leaving prosecutors free to retry those two counts. The money transmission charge carries a maximum five-year prison term, while each unresolved conspiracy count carries a potential maximum sentence of 20 years. The August verdict came after four days of jury deliberations.

After trial, Storm filed a Rule 29 motion challenging the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting both his conviction and the unresolved charges. Failla heard arguments in April but has not yet ruled. The court had already approved a fall retrial schedule contingent on that decision, so the new date keeps the case moving while the acquittal request remains a gatekeeper for what happens next.

DOJ Crypto Policy Has Shifted Since Storm Was Charged

Storm’s case is proceeding under a Justice Department that now takes a narrower view of criminal liability for noncustodial crypto software.

Todd Blanche, now the U.S. attorney general, issued the April 2025 “Ending Regulation By Prosecution” memo while serving as deputy attorney general. The policy instructed prosecutors not to target exchanges, mixers or offline wallets solely for conduct by their end users or for unwitting regulatory violations.

Matthew Galeotti later made the department’s position on developers more explicit, saying that contributing code to an open-source project without specific intent to assist criminal conduct does not create criminal liability. The DOJ also said new money-transmission charges generally would not be approved where software is genuinely decentralized, automates peer-to-peer transactions and gives third parties no custody or control over user assets.

Prosecutors have nevertheless continued to pursue Storm, arguing that Tornado Cash’s developers maintained infrastructure and knowingly facilitated the movement of criminal proceeds. That tension between current DOJ policy and the charges already brought in the case is part of what makes the retrial closely watched by the crypto sector, where questions about developer liability and software control have broader significance.

Tornado Cash Retrial Returns to Developer Control Issue

The retrial is expected to revisit the same dispute over how much control Storm retained after Tornado Cash’s smart contracts were deployed.

The first trial examined changes to Tornado Cash’s frontend and the project’s use of a Chainalysis sanctions oracle intended to block addresses on sanctions lists. Defense testimony questioned whether those controls could stop users who moved funds through fresh addresses before interacting with the protocol.

The legal landscape around Tornado Cash has also changed since Storm was indicted. Treasury removed Tornado Cash sanctions in March 2025 after the Fifth Circuit ruled that immutable smart contracts did not qualify as property that OFAC could sanction.

Storm’s Rule 29 motion remains pending before Failla. The court has now set the retrial for April 26, 2027, with the next proceeding still dependent on how she resolves the acquittal request.