Mistrial Motion In Tornado Cash Case Is Unlikely

IRS Special Agent Stephan George’s testimony regarding some of Hanfeng Lin’s stolen funds having been put through Tornado Cash seemed credible enough to inhibit the defense from submitting a motion for a mistrial.

On Monday, the defense in the Tornado Cash trial floated the idea of submitting a motion for mistrial after FBI Special Agent Joel DeCapua stated that he hadn’t traced the funds stolen from the first witness in the case, Hanfeng Lin, to the Tornado Cash mixing service.

However, after today’s testimony from IRS Special Agent Stephen George, the second witness that the prosecution called on with the training in tracing assets on public blockchains, the odds of the defense submitting a motion for mistrial seem slim at best.

Special Agent George recounted how he employed the LIFO (Last In, First Out) accounting principal and used tools and analytics software including Etherscan.io (a block explorer for Ethereum), Chainalysis’ Reactor, and TRM Labs to trace the stolen funds.

As per Special Agent George’s data, roughly 149,000 USDT was sent from Ms. Lin’s Crypto.com account through a series of wallets. Approximately a third of this amount was then swapped for 9.78 ETH (worth approximately $47,000 at the time) before moving through Tornado Cash on November 15, 2021.

Special Agent George acknowledged that as per the initial disclosure from the prosecution, he wasn’t tasked with tracing these stolen funds from Crypto.com to Tornado Cash, but that he’d begun to do so as of approximately the end of June or early July of this year.

The defense was thorough in their cross-examination of Special Agent George but seemed to struggle to find a hole in his story or a notable flaw in his analytical process.

Special Agent George admitted that his analysis may not have been perfect, but stated that the outcome of his analysis using tracing tools from Chainalysis and from TRM Labs independently produced similar results.

With that said, the defense shared that it plans to finish cross-examining Special Agent George at the start of the trial day tomorrow.

So, there is still some chance that they find a way to discredit some of the data he presented, but based on the cross-examination today, it doesn’t seem likely, which means that the defense won’t have grounds to file a motion for mistrial.

For a more detailed account of what happened in the courtroom today, see this thread on X.