Ethereum Researcher and Cryptocurrency Promoter Pleads Guilty to Advising North Korea Evade Sanctions

A prominent American cryptocurrency promoter and former hacker has pleaded guilty to advising North Korea on using virtual money to avoid international controls, a New York court said Monday.

Virgil Griffith, who is based in Singapore, launched projects in 2018 to provide services to individuals in North Korea by developing and financing cryptocurrency structures, including cryptocurrency mining, according to the Southern District Court of New York.

A ruling will be announced in January 2022.

Griffith, who faces a 20-year prison sentence, worked with others to provide cryptocurrency services and help North Korea evade sanctions, the court said.

He was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2019.

Griffith, 38, had attended a conference on blockchain and virtual currencies in Pyongyang in April that year, where he spoke about how to use both technologies “to evade sanctions,” the US Justice Department said.

Doing so violated US Treasury bans on “exporting any goods, services, or technology” to North Korea, put in place in response to the country’s nuclear weapons program.

After the conference, Griffith “began formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency between the DPRK and South Korea, despite knowing that assisting with such an exchange would violate sanctions,” the Justice Department said, using the North’s official name.

The department said he also announced plans to renounce his US citizenship, aiming to “purchase” citizenship in another country.

Called a “cult hacker” in a New York Times profile 11 years ago, Griffith has a doctorate in theoretical neuroscience from the California Institute of Technology.

Four years ago he joined Ethereum, a Singapore-based company developing a secure blockchain-based global platform for business and finance use, and promoting its own cryptocurrency of the same name. Ether price in India stood at Rs. 2.38 lakhs as of 11am IST on September 30.