A federal judge adjourned Roman Storm’s retrial to April 26, 2027, in an order filed Tuesday, citing the Tornado Cash co-founder’s pending motion for acquittal and his request to move the proceeding to late April.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York set the trial to begin that day at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Manhattan.
The Motion That Has Not Been Decided
The order rests on Storm’s Rule 29 motion for a judgment of acquittal, filed at docket 229. An oral argument on that motion was heard on April 9, 2026. More than four months later, Failla has not ruled.
That unresolved motion now governs the calendar. The order states the adjournment gives the parties and the court additional time to consider Storm’s post-trial motions and to prepare for retrial.
The motion asks the court to set aside Storm’s conviction on the ground that the evidence was legally insufficient. Its outcome determines what a retrial would even cover: granted, it could vacate the conviction or narrow the prosecution; denied, Storm proceeds to sentencing on the existing count and to retrial on the other two.
Storm has also not been sentenced on the count the jury did decide, more than a year after the verdict.
The Amended Schedule
Failla amended the pretrial schedule previously set at docket 296, establishing six deadlines.
Government new or amended expert disclosures are due February 5, 2027, with defense disclosures due March 5 and rebuttal disclosures March 18. Daubert motions, motions in limine, and proposed amendments to requests to charge and voir dire are due March 30, with oppositions due April 9. A final pretrial conference is set for April 20, six days before trial.
Failla found that excluding time under the Speedy Trial Act through April 26, 2027, serves the ends of justice and outweighs the public’s and the defendant’s interest in a speedy retrial.
How the Case Got Here
A Manhattan jury convicted Storm in August 2025 of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and deadlocked on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions. Those two unresolved counts carry a combined maximum of 40 years; the count of conviction carries up to five.
Prosecutors informed the court in March 2026 that they intended to retry both counts, proposing an October 2026 start and estimating three weeks. Storm’s defense argued that scheduling a retrial before the acquittal motion was resolved was premature. The government’s position was that fixing a date early would avoid scheduling conflicts.
The Justice Department separately rejected Storm’s attempt to invoke a Supreme Court decision in support of the acquittal motion, arguing in an April 7 letter that a civil copyright ruling had no bearing on the criminal prosecution.
Prosecutors allege that Storm conspired to launder funds through Tornado Cash, which they say was used to move more than $1 billion in illicit proceeds, including funds tied to the Ronin Bridge hack and to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Storm’s defense has maintained he wrote open-source software over which he had no control once deployed.
The case has run alongside a shifting sanctions position. The Treasury removed Tornado Cash from the SDN list in March 2025 following a court ruling, while the criminal prosecution continued. Co-founder Roman Semenov remains designated and at large. Dutch developer Alexey Pertsev was released from pretrial detention in February 2025 to prepare an appeal against his 2024 conviction.
