Because the trial of Twister Money developer Roman Storm continues into its second week, crypto forensics specialists have raised doubts over the credibility of proof introduced by the prosecution.
Unbiased investigators decry clumsy tracing efforts, the usage of a report from a dodgy forensics firm shut down by the feds, and soiled tips from the prosecution, in what many characterize as a battle for code as free speech
Requires mistrial after ‘bumbling’ efforts to hint funds
After Storm’s lawyer David Patton referred to as for a mistrial on the finish of Monday’s session, blockchain sleuths dug deeper into what the prosecution introduced because the laundering of rip-off sufferer’s funds by the Twister Money mixer.
The validity of testimony introduced by the federal government’s first witness, Katie Lin, was scrutinized over the weekend by MetaMask’s Taylor Monahan, who has spent years tracing funds from large-scale pig butchering schemes, such because the one Lin fell sufferer to.
Monahan’s evaluation was endorsed by fellow investigator ZachXBT.
This primary witness in Roman’s trial instantly caught my consideration bc the sufferer was a basic Pig Butchering case.
The one difficulty is….uh…..these scammers do not use Twister Money? And so they by no means have?
So, like, wtf? https://t.co/27MlcXvc0z
— Tay 💖 (@tayvano_) July 18, 2025
Monahan recognized Lin’s transactions and traced them to an “instaswapper” service used to hop between blockchains.
She says it’s “fully inexcusable” to then declare to have continued tracing funds, as the continued transactions (which later hyperlink to Twister Money) are merely the results of “an unknown input from another chain.”
Coinbase’s Conor Grogan, who traces forgotten funds in his free time, additionally analyzed the transactions.
Regardless of the transaction hash offered as proof being apparently unrelated to Lin’s case, he suspects that investigators combined up decentralized change swaps as transfers between people.
In response to a report from The Rage, even one of many prosecution’s personal blockchain specialists was unable to straight join the sufferer’s transactions to Twister Money.
The prosecution claims that its “expert” witness, “IRS Agent George… will testify about the few short hops to Tornado Cash.”
Monahan is clearly assured in her tracing, and suspects that testimony “would be explicit perjury or career suicide.”
Dodgy crypto restoration firm shut down by feds
Additional doubts over the credibility of the prosecution’s proof base have been raised when X person William J. Jones seemed into Payback, the corporate Lin states she employed to hint the funds.
Jones famous that Payback LTD was considered one of three “cryptocurrency recovery services” whose web sites have been seized by the FBI final yr.
The press launch explains that these corporations “often advertise strong success in recovering victim funds but have no track record in doing so.”
In charging “significant upfront fees and… a commission should funds be recovered” they’re successfully “further defrauding cryptocurrency scam victims.”
Prosecution accused of combating soiled
Storm’s case has made the developer one thing of a martyr determine for privateness and open-source software program advocates who see the trial because the “most important case in crypto”.
To many, it seems like an pointless present of pressure, particularly after the Fifth Circuit Court docket of Appeals deemed that the Workplace of International Property Management’s (OFAC) sanctions in opposition to Twister Money “overstepped,” and ordered their reversal in January.
The prosecution was accused of combating soiled within the run-up to the trial, in search of to take away a few of the protection’s “expert” witnesses, claiming they’d “waste time” and “confuse the jury.”
Throughout the first week, CoinDesk reporter Danny Nelson accused the federal government of “weaponizing” Telegram messages from a CoinDesk-Twister Money group chat, which have been misconstrued as proof of Twister Money builders discussing the way to launder stolen funds.
In yesterday’s session, FBI agent DeCapua dismissed the usage of VPNs as one thing a “regular person” wouldn’t use.
Developer and Safety Alliance member Pascal Caversaccio warns in opposition to this type of characterization: “Treating privacy like a red flag is how we normalise surveillance.”
Subsequent, the prosecution plans to sneak in know-your-customer (KYC)-related testimony after each KYC and anti-money-laundering arguments have been banned in pretrial proceedings, based on The Rage’s L0laL33tz.
Regardless of the continued use of the mixer to launder stolen funds, even throughout the trial, Storm has continued to distance himself from such exercise, together with by returning a $24,000 donation from the eccentric Cork Protocol hacker again to the affected workforce.
