Roman Storm Case: DOJ Cites Sterlingov To Back Venue

Prosecutors in the Roman Storm case sent Judge Katherine Failla a letter on October 5, 2026. It adds one authority to the fight over where the Tornado Cash charges can be tried. That authority is a D.C. Circuit opinion in United States v. Sterlingov, decided September 25, 2026.

What The Letter To Judge Failla Asks

Docket 305 offers "supplemental authority regarding venue on Counts One and Two." Its request is narrow: find venue proper on both.

Page one of the government's letter on the docket.

Venue only decides which district may hear a charge. It does not argue whether the software is lawful. It says nothing about sentencing, the sanctions count or the April 26, 2027 retrial date Storm cites.

Roman Storm And The Sterlingov Comparison

According to the letter, the D.C. Circuit upheld venue on a money laundering conspiracy charge against a mixer operator. Transfers to and from the mixer "furthered" its ability to launder funds, the court reasoned. A depositor made two small deposits, roughly $250 and $97, and pulled most of the money out within days. Roughly $400 million passed through that mixer overall.

Prosecutors then map this onto Count One against Roman Storm. Their in-district user is Shakeeb Ahmed, who traded with Tornado Cash while in the Southern District of New York. Per the letter, the defense argued that his deposit sat in the pools too briefly to matter. Ahmed testified it stayed "a couple days."

Prosecutors also lean on Judge Failla's own words at the April 9, 2026 hearing. She observed that only two Second Circuit cases, Royer and Lange, even mention a materiality requirement for venue in conspiracy cases. Prosecutors point to Royer, where a handful of in-district website subscribers sufficed out of hundreds overall.

Count Two Gets A Different Test

Count Two is the unlicensed money transmitting conspiracy. For that charge, the letter says, the D.C. Circuit asked if the mixer "served customers in the District." Prosecutors note Ahmed used Tornado Cash from his Manhattan apartment. They say the same logic applies.

Whether Judge Failla accepts the government's view of Roman Storm's venue challenge is unknown. The letter itself calls Sterlingov "persuasive authority," which is not binding in New York. Storm says his Rule 29 motion is still pending.

What Storm Says About The Filing

Roman Storm posted about the letter on X at 01:08 UTC on October 6. He wrote that prosecutors "really want to see me convicted" and counted 1,139 days since his case began. An earlier post that day said a jury convicted him in August 2025 on one count and hung on the rest. His acquittal motion is pending.

He paired the letter with a line from the April hearing transcript, Docket 290, page 43. In it, prosecutor Ben Arad argued that legitimate transactions "became illegitimate" because they also facilitated the criminal ends charged. Judge Failla pressed on willfulness in the same exchange, and Arad said he was not suggesting innocent depositors knew.

A Separate Treasury Move

Storm also pointed to FinCEN's notice, document 2026-20429, which withdraws the October 2023 mixing proposal. As our earlier report on the unhosted wallet rule covered, the two notices landed together.

FinCEN says commenters worried the mixing definition "could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity" and burden banks. Storm described that as Treasury admitting it was wrong. FinCEN's text does not use those words. It also says illicit actors still use mixers and that FinCEN will keep monitoring them.

From FinCEN's withdrawal notice, filed October 5, 2026.

Both documents answer different questions. FinCEN's proposal was a reporting rule for financial institutions, while the government's letter concerns a criminal courtroom and where it sits. The notice appears in the Federal Register on October 6, 2026, one day after the letter.