US prosecutors in the criminal trial of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm are expected to conclude their arguments on Thursday, following testimony from an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent linking Storm to transactions on major crypto exchanges.
On Wednesday, IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Stephan George took the stand, testifying that he had examined transaction records from Binance and Crypto.com. According to Inner City Press, George stated that Storm maintained “control” over funds routed from a Binance-linked account to Tornado Cash smart contract addresses. His testimony was based on communications between Storm and his co-founders, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov.
AUSA: What does this tell you?
Agent George: That Roman Storm has control over that Binance account. And you can conclude that Mr. Storm also had access to 2.6 million.— Inner City Press (@innercitypress.bsky.social) 23 July 2025 at 19:11
The testimony comes amid pushback from Storm’s defence team, which had challenged its inclusion. Earlier, Storm’s attorneys questioned the expertise of Hanfeng Lin, a victim of a romance scam who testified about crypto funds allegedly laundered through Tornado Cash. Defence lawyers argued that Lin’s background in accounting did not qualify him to trace crypto proceeds or identify wallet control in criminal cases. Their filing on Tuesday hinted at the possibility of seeking a mistrial after discovering that Lin’s stolen funds might never have passed through Tornado Cash.
“While his accounting background might have provided him the expertise to conduct the analysis he was retained to do, it does not qualify him to testify regarding the tracing of cryptocurrency criminal proceeds which the government is now proposing, which includes not only tracing but also attributing control over various wallet addresses to the alleged hacker, where the identification of accounts is at issue,” Storm’s legal team argued in court.
A key focus of the case is whether Storm could control Tornado Cash operations to prevent illicit transactions, as prosecutors claim. Storm faces charges, including money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business, and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, due to his role at Tornado Cash.
The prosecution is expected to rest its case before noon on Thursday. Storm’s defence will then begin presenting its arguments, with plans to call “two or three doctors” and potentially an expert witness from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
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