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

In short

Prosecutors admitted that early Telegram logs omitted key metadata that might have helped establish the messages as forwarded.
Storm’s protection says the misattribution could have misled a grand jury and tainted the case.
A authorized professional says the error raises considerations about authentication and rumour beneath federal guidelines.

Attorneys for Roman Storm, co-founder of the crypto mixer Twister Money, accused U.S. prosecutors of presenting deceptive proof, simply days earlier than his felony trial.

In a court docket submitting late Friday, Storm’s protection staff stated prosecutors misrepresented key Telegram messages taken from co-defendant Alexey Pertsev’s telephone. The messages, they allege, lacked correct attribution and will have influenced a grand jury with false info.

The dispute facilities on chat logs extracted by U.S. agent Peter Dickerman from a tool seized by Dutch authorities. The federal government initially advised the court docket it produced the related chats in September 2023.

Nonetheless, it corrected that declare Friday, acknowledging it solely shared the ultimate model of the chats, clearly marking forwarded messages, in December 2024.

Storm’s counsel referred to as the error emblematic of broader evidentiary failures, saying the unfinished extraction omits key metadata and that U.S. prosecutors have “compounded the intense errors” by insisting the proof is dependable.

The federal government’s idea seems “absurd,” Storm’s attorneys wrote, arguing that forwarding the reporter’s message “doesn’t remotely recommend that he’s really asking find out how to launder felony proceeds.”

“It could be like saying that, when the sufferer of a menace forwards to the police a message he acquired that claims, ‘I’m going to burn your own home down,’ that the sufferer is now saying he’s going to burn the police officer’s home down,” the attorneys wrote.

Storm is charged with conspiracy to commit cash laundering and working an unlicensed cash transmission enterprise by the protocol.

A query of authenticity

In a letter filed Saturday in New York, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ben Arad, Thane Rehn, and Benjamin Gianforti, signing as line prosecutors on the case, acknowledged that earlier variations of the chats, produced in September 2023, have been shared as plaintext information.

These, just like the HTML information initially acquired from Dutch authorities, “don’t establish when a message was forwarded,” the prosecutors wrote, including that the “Bablo chat” the place the disputed message appeared “was not included in that manufacturing.”

In line with the prosecution, the model it intends to make use of at trial was extracted instantly by IRS Particular Agent Dickerman and shared with the protection in December 2024.

Prosecutors argue that the sooner formatting “has no bearing on the authenticity” of the proof and that the protection had these correctly formatted messages for over seven months earlier than they raised the problem, three days earlier than trial.

Guidelines and errors

However the energy of the protection’s objection is dependent upon “the diploma of prosecutorial error,” whether or not the unique speaker can confirm the assertion, and if different proof helps the fees, Andrew Rossow, digital media legal professional and CEO of AR Media, advised Decrypt.

The flaw surfaced as Storm’s staff reviewed a whole lot of presidency displays disclosed late final month. Not like customary Telegram messages that present the place a message was forwarded from, the federal government’s model omits that metadata.

“With out the writer metadata, reliability and admissibility are undoubtedly positioned beneath a better degree of scrutiny since you should handle authentication points and rumour considerations,” Rossow defined, citing federal guidelines of proof, which require the federal government to show that any proof is what it claims to be.

Requested whether or not the late correction bolsters the protection’s place, Rossow agreed.

“Prosecution can’t profit from their well timed reveal of their very own errors,” he stated, including that “the attribution error carries full weight.”

Rossow factors to Brady v. Maryland (1963), a landmark case that established what’s now often known as the “Brady rule.” Below this, prosecutors have a seamless obligation to appropriate materials misrepresentations all through proceedings.

This sort of late discovery, Rossow stated, “may really strengthen the protection argument,” might even strengthen the protection, “relying upon whether or not prosecutors knew about this earlier on however did not disclose or any patterns of mishandling,” or if elements of the case are decided to relaxation on flawed proof.

Decrypt reached out for remark to the DOJ and Storm’s authorized counsel from Waymaker LLP and Hecker Fink LLP.