TheBlock
A federal appeals panel is scrutinizing whether a handful of undercover transactions conducted in Washington D.C. were legally sufficient to establish venue for the Bitcoin Fog prosecution — a question with sweeping implications for how U.S. law reaches global crypto services. Roman Sterlingov was convicted in 2024 for operating the long-running Bitcoin mixer, but his appeal is now forcing judges to examine the geographic foundations of the case.
The panel also challenged the reliability of the "IP overlap" analysis that prosecutors used to link Sterlingov to Bitcoin Fog's operations. If that methodology doesn't survive appellate review, it could weaken a key pillar of the government's technical evidence playbook in future crypto cases.
The outcome matters beyond Sterlingov: a ruling that a few D.C.-based sting transactions are insufficient to anchor venue would complicate DOJ's…
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