Roman Sterlingov was convicted for operating the crypto mixer Bitcoin Fog

Proprietary Chainalysis software with an unknown method was used as evidence.  The jury trusted them at their word.  And a conflicting firm CipherTrace was going to testify against this software, but suddenly backed out.

The rest of this post is a big quote from CoinDesk:

"In particular, in a lengthy pretrial debate, there were concerns the software had not been “peer-reviewed” or scientifically accredited and could generate false positives. This ended up not mattering much in court: Judge Moss said he was “unpersuaded” by the defense’s stance that blockchain analytics is faulty. “Substantial evidence supports the government’s submission that the software is highly reliable—and, if anything, conservative,” Moss wrote in a 31-page pre-trial order.

In August, Jonelle Still, director of investigations and intelligence at competitor analysis firm CipherTrace, submitted a 41-page expert report claiming Chainalysis used “unverifiable” and “incomplete” techniques to incorrectly link Sterlingov to Bitcoin Fog. Mastercard, which bought CipherTrace in 2021, later spiked the report.

“We lost our tracing expert right before the trial,” Ekeland said (Sterlingov's lawyer), adding “we never got a really clear reason why.”

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2024/03/13/how-a-bitcoin-mixer-laundering-conviction-might-be-appealed/