The U.S. Department of Justice is moving to retry Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, according to a new filing from prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. In a March 9 letter to Judge Katherine Polk Failla, the government asked the court to schedule a retrial on two unresolved counts from Storm’s 2025 case, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions law. Prosecutors estimate the retrial will last about three weeks and suggested a start date around October 5 or October 12, 2026.

Storm was originally indicted in 2023 for his role in building Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol that allows users to obscure transaction history on Ethereum. At trial in August 2025, a jury convicted Storm on one count related to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business but failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the money-laundering and sanctions charges, leaving those counts unresolved. Storm’s legal team has argued that the case improperly attempts to hold an open-source software developer responsible for how third parties use code he does not control.

The retrial highlights the broader legal battle over whether developers can be held liable for decentralized software. Amanda Tuminelli, Executive Director and Chief Legal Officer at the DeFi Education Fund, wrote on X:

“DOJ has decided it will retry Roman Storm in the fall. Despite failing to convince a jury the first time around, despite making obvious mistakes like calling irrelevant witnesses and not understanding the forensic analysis of their own blockchain evidence, and despite multiple legal and logical fallacies to their allegations of third-party dev liability, the SDNY will retry Roman Storm on counts 1 and 3 of the indictment. Incredibly disappointing news.”