On the eve of the Tornado Cash co-founder trial, allegations were made against the prosecution for submitting "misleading evidence," with missing key chat record metadata causing controversy.

The legal team of Roman Storm, co-founder of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash, publicly accused U.S. federal prosecutors of submitting misleading evidence to the court just days before his criminal trial is set to begin.

In a court document submitted late last Friday, Storm's defense team claimed that the prosecution distorted key Telegram messages extracted from the mobile phone of co-defendant Alexey Pertsev. They alleged that these messages lacked accurate source attribution and may have misled the grand jury responsible for the prosecution decision with false information.

Controversy Focus: Extraction of Telegram Chat Records and Missing Metadata

The core of this debate is the chat logs extracted by US agent Peter Dickerman from the equipment seized by Dutch authorities. The US government initially informed the court that the relevant chat logs had been submitted in September 2023. However, the prosecution corrected this statement on Friday, admitting that they did not share the clearly marked final version chat logs (which clearly indicated which were forwarded messages) until December 2024.

Storm's attorney stated that this error is a microcosm of the major mishandling of evidence in the entire case. They pointed out that the incomplete extraction process omitted key metadata, while the U.S. prosecutor insisted that this evidence is reliable, which exacerbated the serious error. Storm's attorney wrote in the filing that the government's theory appears absurd, claiming that forwarding a message cannot be equated to him inquiring about how to wash crime proceeds.

"It's like saying that when a victim of a threat forwards the message 'I'm going to burn down your house' to the police, it means the victim is now saying he is going to burn down the police's house." The lawyers made this analogy.

Storm is accused of conspiring to launder money through the Tornado protocol and operating an unlicensed remittance business.

Doubts about the authenticity of evidence: Format differences and timeline issues

In a document submitted to the New York court last Saturday, a letter signed by the case prosecutors Ben Arad, Thane Rehn, and Benjamin Gianforti acknowledged that the earlier version of the chat logs submitted in September 2023 was shared in plaintext format.

The prosecutor wrote that these documents, like the HTML files originally received from the Dutch authorities, "do not identify when the message was forwarded" and added that the disputed message's "Bablo chat records" "were not included in that submission."

According to the prosecution, the version they plan to use in the trial was directly extracted by IRS special agent Dickerman and shared with the defense in December 2024. The prosecutors argued that the earlier formatting issues "did not affect the authenticity of the evidence" and that the defense had held correctly formatted messages for over seven months before raising questions (just three days before the trial).

Legal Rules and Prosecutorial Missteps: Evidence Authentication and the Interrogation of the "Brady Rule"

However, digital media lawyer and AR Media CEO Andrew Rossow stated to the media that the strength of the defense's objections depends on the "degree of prosecution error", whether the original speaker can verify the statement, and whether there is other evidence to support the allegations.

Rossow explained: "The lack of author metadata will undoubtedly subject the evidence's reliability and admissibility to stricter scrutiny, as you must address the authentication issue and concerns about hearsay." He cited the federal rules of evidence, which require the government to prove that any evidence is what it claims to be.

When asked whether the prosecution's late correction would strengthen the defense's position, Rossow agreed. He stated, "The prosecution cannot benefit from their own timely exposure of errors," and added that "attribution errors carry significant weight."

Rossow pointed out the Brady v. Maryland (1963) case, which established what is now known as the Brady rule, a landmark ruling. According to this rule, prosecutors have a continuing obligation to correct substantial misstatements throughout the litigation process.

Rossow stated that this evidence issue, which was discovered only shortly before the trial, "could actually strengthen the defense's argument" and may even "enhance the defense's strength"—"this depends on whether the prosecutor was already aware but did not disclose it, or if there is a pattern of mishandling evidence," or whether parts of the case are determined to rely on "defective evidence."

Warning in the Crypto Industry: Metadata Integrity and Fairness of Judicial Proceedings

This vulnerability came to light when the Storm team reviewed hundreds of evidence exhibits that the government disclosed only at the end of last month. Unlike standard Telegram messages (which show the forwarding source of the message), the version provided by the government lacked this critical metadata.

This case highlights the extreme importance of the integrity of digital evidence extraction and metadata preservation in cases involving blockchain analysis and on-chain transaction tracking. For users and developers relying on encryption privacy tools, the prosecution's handling of Telegram chat records and its impact on evidence authentication has raised profound concerns about whether judicial procedures are rigorous enough to cope with the complexity of DeFi technology. The final ruling in the Tornado Cash case will have a significant impact on the definition of legal responsibilities of privacy protection protocols under future Crypto Assets regulation frameworks.

(Source: Decrypt)