Attorneys react to the partial verdict The US can

Attorneys react to the partial verdict

The US can still bring Roman Storm back to court on the unresolved charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate North Korea sanctions. The decision would depend on several factors, including the likelihood of securing a conviction in a second trial.

“If the Trump administration wants the USA to be the crypto capital of the world, then the DOJ must not be allowed to retry the two deadlocked charges,” Chervinsky said.

Chervinsky described the partial verdict as “a sad day for DeFi,” warning that section 1960 under the US Code, which prosecutors used to charge Storm with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, represents an existential threat to decentralized finance applications.

“All in all, this leads to a pretty depressing conclusion,” attorney Zack Shapiro wrote on X, but said that it was good the “draconian” prison sentences for the money laundering charges were off the table for now.

I think it's reasonable to conclude that the government might not retry the mistried counts of money laundering given the political posturing

A US court overturned the Tornado Cash sanctions in January 2025, handing decentralized crypto and privacy-preserving protocols a major legal victory.

The sanctions were imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022, accusing the crypto mixing service of money laundering.

DOJ officials claimed the Tornado Cash protocol helped launder over $7 billion in crypto between 2019 and 2022 and was instrumental to North Korean state-sanctioned hackers laundering funds stolen through hacking.