Mistral’s movement in tornado cash incidents is unlikely

Testimony regarding the fact that some of the stolen funds from IRS Special Agent Stephen George’s Hanfen Lin had been placed in tornado cash seemed reliable enough to prevent the defense from filing a claim of tort.

On Monday, the defense of the tornado cash trial came to mind to file a motion for the Miss Trial after saying that FBI special agent Joel DeCapua had not tracked the tracking of funds stolen from the case’s first witness to Tornado Cash Mixing Services.

However, after today’s testimony from IRS special agent Stephen George, the second witness, the second witness who prosecutors sought training to track assets on public blockchains, seems slim at best to file a complaint of dispute.

Special Agent George hired the accounting principals from LIFO (last, first out) that included Etherscan.io (Ethereum’s Block Explorer), Chainalysis’ Reactor, and TRM Labs, and spoke about how they used the TRM Lab to track stolen funds.

According to data from special agent George, approximately 149,000 USDT was sent from Lynn’s crypto.com account through a series of wallets. About a third of this amount was exchanged for 9.78 ETH (worth around $47,000 at the time) before moving the Tornado Cash on November 15th, 2021.

Special Agent George admitted that, according to initial disclosures from prosecutors, he was not tasked with tracking these stolen funds from crypto.com to tornado cash, but began to do so at the end of June or early July this year.

This defense was thorough in cross-examination of special agent George, but it seemed to struggle to find holes in his story and the notable flaws in the analytical process.

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

That being said, the defense shared that he plans to complete Cross Agent Special Agent George at the beginning of tomorrow’s trial.

So, there is still a possibility that he could find a way to trust some of the data he presented, but based on today’s cross-examination, it doesn’t seem possible.

See this thread in X for a more detailed explanation of what happened in court today.