IRS Particular Agent Stephan George’s testimony concerning a few of Hanfeng Lin’s stolen funds having been put by way of Twister Money appeared credible sufficient to inhibit the protection from submitting a movement for a mistrial.
On Monday, the protection within the Twister Money trial floated the idea of submitting a motion for mistrial after FBI Particular Agent Joel DeCapua said that he hadn’t traced the funds stolen from the first witness in the case, Hanfeng Lin, to the Twister Money mixing service.
Nonetheless, after at the moment’s testimony from IRS Particular Agent Stephen George, the second witness that the prosecution known as on with the coaching in tracing belongings on public blockchains, the percentages of the protection submitting a movement for mistrial appear slim at greatest.
Particular Agent George recounted how he employed the LIFO (Final In, First Out) accounting principal and used instruments and analytics software program together with Etherscan.io (a block explorer for Ethereum), Chainalysis’ Reactor, and TRM Labs to hint the stolen funds.
As per Particular Agent George’s information, roughly 149,000 USDT was despatched from Ms. Lin’s Crypto.com account by way of a sequence of wallets. Roughly a 3rd of this quantity was then swapped for 9.78 ETH (price roughly $47,000 on the time) earlier than shifting by way of Twister Money on November 15, 2021.
Particular Agent George acknowledged that as per the preliminary disclosure from the prosecution, he wasn’t tasked with tracing these stolen funds from Crypto.com to Twister Money, however that he’d begun to take action as of roughly the tip of June or early July of this 12 months.
The protection was thorough of their cross-examination of Particular Agent George however appeared to wrestle to discover a gap in his story or a notable flaw in his analytical course of.
Particular Agent George admitted that his evaluation might not have been excellent, however said that the result of his evaluation utilizing tracing instruments from Chainalysis and from TRM Labs independently produced comparable outcomes.
With that stated, the protection shared that it plans to complete cross-examining Particular Agent George in the beginning of the trial day tomorrow.
So, there may be nonetheless some likelihood that they discover a strategy to discredit a few of the information he offered, however primarily based on the cross-examination at the moment, it doesn’t appear seemingly, which signifies that the protection gained’t have grounds to file a movement for mistrial.
For a extra detailed account of what occurred within the courtroom at the moment, see this thread on X.
