A Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor, in the Tornado Cash case against co-creator Roman Storm, used a misattributed quote to argue that the Tornado Cash team demonstrated a “consciousness of guilt.”

The controversy centers on a Telegram message, alluding to the $600 million hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, that read: “Heya, anyone around to chat about axie? Would like to ask a few general questions about how one goes about cashing out 600 mil.”

Prosecutors initially claimed this message was authored by Tornado Cash co-creator Alexey Pertsev. In reality, the message was originally written by Andrew Thurman, then a senior tech reporter at CoinDesk, and was merely forwarded by Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to a separate chat.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

This evidentiary error has become a significant point of contention, with the defense arguing it undermines the reliability of the prosecution’s narrative and the integrity of the case.

“The government also makes the preposterous claim that its attribution of the reporter’s message to Pertsev was actually legally proper, claiming that by forwarding the message, Pertsev somehow adopted it,” wrote Storm’s lawyers.

“It would be like saying that, when the victim of a threat forwards to the police a message he received that says, ‘I’m going to burn your house down,’ that the victim is now saying he is going to burn the police officer’s house down.”