Today, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) hosted a final status conference hearing to Tornado Cash Case, the trial that begins this Monday, 7/14.
The hearing was almost held, and participants included Judge Katherine Polk Failla (the judge, who was chairman of the trial), Tornado Cash-Medter Roman Storm and Members of the Armed Forces and the prosecution.
Storm is facing three charges: conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to run an unlicensed money that transfers business, and conspiracy to commit sanctions.
The main topics discussed in the consultation included:
- The reasons why the New York Court of Court becomes a meeting place for the trial
- The influence of the storm on a Bloomberg Reporter reporting on Tornado Cash in March 2020
- Whether all the actions of the Tornado Cash-Med Founders and Developers to Keep Tornado Cash Run
- The assumption of the data that has been extracted from Tornado Cash-Medfifer Alexey Pertsev’s phone
- How Judge Failla plans to focus more on how Storm drives a pre-profit business than the details of Tornado Cash’s Crypto Mixing Software himself
Before participating in these topics, Judge Failla shared some key information about the trial’s procedure.
Details of the trial
The trial begins Monday Morning at. 9:30 EST, and one of the first items on the dock is the choice of jury.
Judge Failla noted that the trial will not be registered, sent out or re -broadcast. (However, I will be there to cover the most, if not all of it!)
She also said she would like to see the trial ended within three weeks, though she added that she doesn’t think it will be and that she may need to take some time from the trial in early August to celebrate her sick mother’s birthday.
In addition, Judge Failla declared that opening declarations were first made on Tuesday 7/15.
Why the Tornado -Content Trial is held in SDNY
According to the prosecution, the SDNY trial continues because Storm ran a site that facilitated Tornado cash transactions from New York City for a period of time.
The prosecution claimed that Storm also often communicated with one of Venture Capital (VC) principals who financed Tornado Cash and were also based in New York City at the time.
The prosecution added that Storm made frequent requests from this VC director and that the requests were not only related to financing.
Storm ‘corrected’ a Bloomberg Reporter
The prosecution explained how Storm in March 2020 contacted a Bloomberg Reporter who had written a story about Tornado Cash to get the reporter to change the story so that the coverage would not cause the authorities to perceive Tornado cash in a negative light.
They argued that Storm spoke with the reporter and convincingly mentioned reporter to change the story “made the story inaccurate.”
The defense pushed back and said Storm only contacted the reporter to make sure “appropriate corrections” were made to the story.
Storm did not speak with this case in the consultation.
All in the promotion of the charged conspiracies?
The prosecution flowed the notion that all the efforts made by Storm and his co-founders in the operation of their pre-profit business that used the Tornado Contents Technology promoted all the conspiracies that Storm is indicted.
One of the efforts that the prosecution quoted was a storm, and his co-founders who encouraged US-based Tornado-Contents to use the service, thereby creating a larger pool of capital for the money that North Korean hackers have put through the software to mix (making it easier for the funds to be anonymized).
The judge pushed back as the prosecution made this argument and asked the prosecution to clarify if it thought it thought that everything Tornado-Content Co-founders did to keep their business fluid, accelerating the conspiracy that the storm is charged.
This gave the prosecution, and at this moment one of the defense attorneys moved to reject the indictment against Storm due to a lack of locality.
The judge quickly denied the proposal before claiming that such a request had frustrated her so much that it caused her to “break out in hive.”
Graykey Progress Report
Throughout the hearing, Judge Failla brought up the Graykey data extraction from Alexey Pertsev’s phone. (Pertsev was sentenced to five years in prison in the Netherlands for his commitment with Tornado Cash.)
Against the last part of the consultation, she asked both the prosecution and the defense whether they had questions about Pertsev’s phone and then raised questions about whether the data extracted from Pertsev’s phone can be assumed for treatment. She decided to postpone her decision on the case until trial.
She then requested that both the prosecution and the defense review the data in question as well as the process on which they were obtained, and prepared to answer the question during the trial.
Focusing on the front end
Judge Failla was aware that at least the beginning of the trial will not be focused on Tornado Cash as a mixing service, but more on the site, the front-end interface, the storm created to facilitate transactions via Tornado Cash software.
“[We’re] Don’t want to think about cryptomerie, ”the judge said.
However, she said she was waiting for a response from the defense of what she had written and submitted to the Court on Crypto Services.
Witnesses and movements In Limine
Apart from the above questions, the consultation participants discussed the witnesses in the case and the supplementary movements In Limine (Those not published before or during a lawsuit because they are irrelevant, harmful or declining).
However, none of the names of the witnesses were revealed during the hearing, but the prosecution mentioned that “Witness No. 1” had recently been identified and that they had interviewed this witness.
The judge recognized the defense’s request to exclude certain materials related to Witness No. 1.
More movements In Limine was discussed. During this part of the hearing, the judge informed the prosecution that the witnesses should not do things like discussing the emotional stress they endured by having the funds they put through Tornado Cash Frozen.
Instead, she said she prefers witnesses who were victims to get their funds frozen share, whether they reached out to the Tornado Cash team in the effort to get their means to be frozen.
What was not discussed
At no time during today’s consultation was it bred that the US Ministry of Finance’s Foreign Authority’s Office (OFAC) has removed Tornado Cash from its sanction list, nor that a court recently fell Coin Center’s appeal to OFAC regarding this case.