Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash Retrial Pushed to April 26, 2027, Six-Month Delay Confirmed

US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla has pushed the retrial of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm from Oct. 26, 2026 to April 26, 2027, a six-month delay confirmed by two independent outlets, The Block and Cointelegraph. The order, issued Tuesday, ties the postponement directly to Storm’s still-pending motion for acquittal and a related request for extra preparation time.

Both reports agree on the mechanics: Storm’s defense filed for the delay on Aug. 3, telling the court it needed at least 90 days after any ruling on the acquittal motion to prepare for a second trial. Prosecutors opposed the adjournment. The judge sided with the defense timeline anyway.

Two sources, one confirmed order: what’s settled

The core facts here are corroborated, not single-sourced. A Manhattan jury convicted Storm in August 2025 on one count, conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, a charge that carries a maximum five years in prison. Jurors deadlocked on two other counts: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate US sanctions.

Prosecutors asked in March to schedule an October retrial on those two unresolved counts. Storm, in turn, has moved to have the court acquit him on all three charges, arguing the government never proved he intended to help criminals misuse the Tornado Cash protocol. That motion remains undecided, and it is the reason the retrial calendar just moved by half a year.

What’s still unresolved

Judge Failla has not ruled on the acquittal motion itself, and neither source reports a timeline for that decision. The 90-day preparation window the defense requested only starts running once she does rule, which means April 2027 is a scheduled backstop rather than a fixed guarantee. If the ruling comes late, the date could shift again.

Storm addressed the delay directly on X the same day the order came down. “My acquittal motion is still sitting there, undecided,” he wrote. “I honestly don’t know when this ends.”

Why the case still matters for developers

Tornado Cash is a privacy protocol that mixes cryptocurrency transactions to obscure their origin. US prosecutors have argued its operators knowingly facilitated money laundering, while Storm’s defense frames the case as an attempt to hold a software author liable for how third parties used open-source code. The outcome on the two deadlocked counts, conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate sanctions, will shape how far US authorities can reach when a protocol’s users, not its builders, commit the underlying crime.

For now, the confirmed timeline is limited: a five-year maximum sentence exposure on the count already decided, two counts still open, and an acquittal motion sitting unresolved with no public deadline attached. April 26, 2027 is the next date on the calendar, but it depends entirely on a ruling that hasn’t come yet.

Sources

• theblock.co
• cointelegraph.com