Prosecution's Use of Error Message to Prove "Guilty Mind" in Tornado Cash Case Sparks Controversy

During the pre-trial hearing of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, prosecutors in the Southern District of the United States mistakenly attributed a Telegram message asking "how to cash out $600 million" to the development team, in an attempt to prove their "consciousness of guilt." Defense documents reveal that the message was actually written by a CoinDesk reporter and forwarded to the Tornado Cash group by Alexey Pertsev. The prosecution admitted that the originally provided chat logs did not show the "forwarded" tag, leading to the misunderstanding, but claimed that a corrected version was provided in December 2024. Storm's defense team has requested the exclusion of all Telegram evidence from Pertsev's phone and questioned the integrity of the grand jury process. Pertsev has already been sentenced to 64 months in prison by a Dutch court for aiding money laundering. (The Block) [Odaily Planet Daily News]