Roman Storm's Legal Privacy Screen Gets Yanked: DOJ Won't Let Him Hide Behind Cox Ruling

Roman Storm's legal team tried to catch a break using a recent Supreme Court ruling, but the DOJ just ripped that playbook clean in half.

Federal prosecutors urged Judge Katherine Polk Failla to disregard the March 25 Cox decision, which Storm's attorneys argued shielded software developers from liability when users abuse their platforms—even if they know about it. The DOJ wasn't having it.

In a blunt three-page letter, prosecutors drew a hard line: Storm personally knew Tornado Cash users were laundering money and did nothing. Cox, by contrast, went out of its way to discourage piracy with policies that curbed most bad behavior. Plus, Cox's services had tons of legitimate uses. The DOJ claimed privacy mixers like Tornado Cash don't have that same commercial upside.

"The defendant's conduct simply is not comparable to the conduct at issue in Cox," prosecutors wrote. "In any event, a civil copyright case has no relevance here in the first place."

Storm was originally convicted last summer of running an illegal money transmitter, though the jury hung on money laundering and sanctions evasion charges. The Trump DOJ wants a retrial on those counts.

It's a curious move given the administration's loud pro-crypto cheerleading. Last year, DOJ officials promised to stop prosecuting privacy software devs—a promise the industry celebrated. Then federal prosecutors kept locking them up anyway.

Storm's lawyers thought the Cox card was their Get Out of Jail Free moment. Apparently not.