Reports suggest that the trial of Tornado Cash co-founder, Roman Storm, may be on the brink of a mistrial, following disputes over the evidence presented by the prosecution. Storm’s defense team have expressed their doubts about the credibility of a witness brought forward by the prosecution, who claims to be a victim of a pig butchering scam.
As the trial enters into its second week, David Patton, the lawyer representing Storm, has challenged the witness’ claims that her stolen cryptocurrency was laundered via Tornado Cash. The reports of this development have been covered by DL News and CoinDesk.
The witness, Hanfeng Ling, had previously testified that she fell prey to a pig butchering scam in 2021. She also asserted that a “crypto recovery service” she utilized indicated that some of the stolen funds had been funneled through Tornado Cash. However, Storm’s defense team expressed their inability to trace Ling’s funds back to Tornado Cash over the weekend.
Taylor Monahan, an Ethereum security expert, took to social media over the weekend to state that scammers do not typically use Tornado Cash. She made a series of posts detailing her belief that Ling’s funds were not laundered via Tornado Cash.
Storm’s trial, which started last week in a Manhattan federal court, sees him facing charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and sanctions violations connected to his operation of Tornado Cash. If found guilty on all charges, Storm could be looking at a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison. He has entered a plea of not guilty.
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