Cryptocurrency expert, Virgil Griffiths, has pleaded guilty to helping the North Korean government use blockchain to evade US sanctions. The blockchain expert is now facing a 20 year prison sentence- he will be sentenced on January 18, 2022.
Griffiths was initially arrested back in November 2019 after flying to North Korea in April of that year. In North Korea, Griffiths gave a technical talk at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference. The expert was warned by the US not to go ahead with his trip but he decided to go anyway.
Before his arrest, Griffiths was a resident of Singapore. The 38-year-old pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in US District Court on Monday, 27.
US Attorney Audrey Strauss said, “As he admitted in court today, Virgil Griffith agreed to help one of our nation’s most dangerous foreign adversaries, North Korea. Griffith worked with others to provide cryptocurrency services to North Korea and assist North Korea in evading sanctions, and traveled to North Korea to do so.” Adding, “In the process, Griffith jeopardized the national security of the United States by undermining the sanctions that both Congress and the President have enacted to place maximum pressure on the threat posed by North Korea’s treacherous regime.”
Currently, US citizens are banned from exporting any goods, services or technologies to North Korea without a license from the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Justice Department has claimed that Griffiths began conspiring with the North Korean government back in 2018 by developing and funding cryptocurrency projects in the country, including crypto mining technology.
Griffiths allegedly knew that the tools would be used to evade US sanctions and fund North Korean government activities including the North Korean nuclear weapons program. The presentation given by Griffiths at the conference in 2019 was allegedly tailored to the DPRK audience, according to the Justice Department.
“At the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, Griffiths and his co-conspirators provided instruction on how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions. Griffiths’s presentations at the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference had been approved by DPRK officials and focused on, among other things, how blockchain technology such as ‘smart contracts’ could be used to benefit the DPRK, including in nuclear weapons negotiations with the United States.”
Griffiths also helped to answer questions about cryptocurrency and blockchain and worked to set up ways for cryptocurrency to be exchanged between North Korea and South Korea. The original criminal complaint made against Griffiths says that he was working on “plans to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency-1 (Ether) between the DPRK and South Korea.”
Before his arrest, Griffiths was a member of the Ethereum Foundation’s Special Projects group and also operated a Tor-to-Web service called Onion.city.
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