Prosecutors Cite Bitcoin Fog Ruling Against Roman Storm's Venue Challenge

Federal prosecutors have >told the judge overseeing Roman Storm's Tornado Cash case that an appeals court's decision upholding the conviction of Bitcoin Fog founder Roman Sterlingov supports their position that Storm was properly tried in New York. Tornado Cash and Bitcoin Fog are coin mixers, software that pools users' crypto to break the on-chain link between where funds come from and where they go. The letter, filed Monday with Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the Southern District of New York, cites the D.C. Circuit's September 25 ruling, which affirmed Sterlingov's conviction and 150-month sentence. Storm's motion for acquittal, which challenges venue among other grounds, was argued in April and remains undecided. A Manhattan jury convicted Storm in August 2025 of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and deadlocked on money laundering and sanctions charges. The letter addresses the money laundering conspiracy count and the money transmitting count. The Constitution requires that a crime be tried where at least part of it took place. In Sterlingov's case, the D.C. Circuit found venue proper in Washington based largely on a sting in which a special agent deposited about $250 worth of >Bitcoin into Bitcoin Fog from D.C. and withdrew almost all of it the next day, according to the opinion. Prosecutors argue the same reasoning applies to Shakeeb Ahmed, a Tornado Cash user who testified he accessed the service "in [his] apartment in Manhattan." Storm's lawyers had argued that Ahmed's funds sat in the pools too briefly