Waymaker-led Defense Rests in Storm Trial after Witnesses Testify

Keri Curtis Axel, Brian Klein, and the Waymaker defense team for Roman Storm rested their case, without the defendant taking the stand, in a SDNY criminal trial in which Storm is accused of money laundering and other violations based on his development of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash.

On July 29, 2025, Law360 reported that the defense rested its case. The defense maintains that the Tornado Cash protocol was legitimate software that facilitated private crypto transactions. Klein called to the stand defense witness Matthew D. Green, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and a crypto expert, who testified that all blockchain transactions include public disclosure of transaction information, such as source and recipient crypto wallet addresses, information that can be used by bad actors for hacking and fraud.

By contrast, Green testified, Tornado Cash’s smart contract-controlled workaround relies on a series of Ethereum pools that allow for private withdrawals with no transaction history. If the smart contract is written correctly, “there isn’t really anything that a criminal can do to steal the money,” Green said.

Storm is represented by the Waymaker team of Axel, Klein, Kevin Casey, Becky James, and Viviana Andazola Marquez. The case is U.S. v. Storm, case number 1:23-cr-00430, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.