Lin told jurors last week she lost her life savings to a pig-butchering scheme and believed the proceeds moved through the crypto mixer Storm co-created.
Defense attorney Brian Patton argued that Lin’s account may be inadmissible if prosecutors cannot prove Tornado Cash handled her coins.
He argued in front of US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla that presenting sympathetic testimony without a verifiable on-chain link “prejudices the jury” and suggested the deficiency could warrant a mistrial.
She posted Dune Analytics queries and federal asset-seizure filings that list the addresses, contending that an outside “crypto recovery” firm misidentified Tornado Cash in 2022 when advising Lin.
Judge Failla allowed Patton to confer with Storm regarding the mistrial, which would leave prosecutors to decide whether to retry Storm on sanctions-violation and money laundering counts stemming from the Treasury’s 2022 designation of Tornado Cash as a facilitator of illicit fund flows.
For now, proceedings hinge on whether the forthcoming expert can verify a Tornado Cash link that the FBI’s analyst could not establish.
