Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm Alleges DOJ Botched Key Telegram Evidence

Lawyers for Roman Storm, co -founder of the crypto of Mixer Tornado Cash, accused US prosecutors of presenting the misconceptions of evidence, just a few days before the criminal trial.

In a submission of requests for court Late on Friday, the Storm’s defense team said prosecutors mistakenly presented key messages of telegram taken from the phone of the co -accused Alexey Pertsev. The messages, they claim, were missing appropriate attribution and may have influenced the great jury with false data.

The dispute focuses on chat records drawn by US agent Peter Dickerman from the devices that seized the Dutch authorities. The government initially told the court that it had produced relevant chats in September 2023.

Still, that corrected That claim on Friday, admitting that in December 2024, she shared the final version of Chatov, a clearly marked message.

Storm’s Accisel called an error emblematic wider failure, saying that incomplete extraction omits key metadodaks and that US prosecutors “stacked serious mistakes” insisting that the evidence is reliable.

Government theory seems to be “absurd”, Storms wrote, claiming that forwarding a reporter’s message “not at a distance does not suggest that he actually asks how to make criminal income.”

“It would be like saying that when the victim of threats forwarded to the police a message he received:” I will burn your house, “that the victim now says that he will burn the police house,” the lawyers wrote.

It’s a storm packed with a conspiracy to do money laundering and operated unlucky money to transfer money through the protocol.

A question of authenticity

In a letter Submitted on Saturday in New York, assistant American lawyers Ben Arad, Thane Rehn and Benjamin Gianforta, who signed as prosecutors in that case, admitted that earlier versions of Chats, produced in September 2023, were divided as a cloak file.

Those, like HTML files that were initially received from the Dutch authorities, “do not identify when the message was forwarded,” the prosecutors wrote, adding that the “Bablo Chat” where the disputed message appeared “was not involved in this production”.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the version intended to use at the trial was directly drawn by the Special Agent IRS Dickerman, shared in December 2024 by defense.

Prosecutors claim that earlier formatting “there is no effect on authenticity” evidence and that the defense had these properly formatted messages for more than seven months before they asked that question, three days before the trial.

Rules and errors

However, the power of the defense complaint depends on the “degree of prosecutor”, whether the original speaker can confirm the statement and whether other evidence supports the charges, said Andrew Rossow, a Digital Media lawyer and AR Media CEO, said Decipher.

The disadvantage appeared while the Storm’s team examined hundreds of government exhibits published at the end of last month. Unlike the standard telegram messages that show where the message was forwarded, the government version omits these metadodaks.

“Without copyright metadatics, reliability and acceptability are undoubtedly set under a higher level of supervision, because you have to get rid of the questions of authenticity and concern,” Rossow explained, quoting, citing himself Federal rules of evidencewhat requires the Government to prove that any proof is what he claims to be.

Asked if the late correction increases the defense position, Rossow agreed.

“The prosecution may not benefit from their timely detection of their own mistakes,” he said, adding that “attribution error has full weight.”

Rossow indicates Brady against Maryland (1963)A significant case that has established what is known today as “Brady’s rule.” Therefore, prosecutors have a continuous duty to correct material misconceptions during the proceedings.

This kind of late discovery, Rossow said, “actually strengthened the defense argument,” even could strengthen the defense, “depending on whether the prosecutors knew about it earlier, but did not disclose or any misdeeds of misconception” or the parts of the case are determined to rest on the wrong evidence.

Decipher He reached for the commentary -in -old storm -I -based LLP -Waymaker and Hecker Fink LLP.