A cryptocurrency expert was sentenced to five years behind bars Tuesday for his unsanctioned 2019 trip to North Korea to help the country avoid sanctions.
Virgil Griffith has been ordered to three years of supervised release following his prison sentence, as well as a $100,000 fine for his pilgrimage that federal prosecutors decried as a means of teaching techniques to evade Western sanctions levied on the pariah state over its nuclear program and human rights violations, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled Tuesday.
“There is no question North Korea poses a national security threat to our nation, and the regime has shown time and again it will stop at nothing to ignore our laws for its own benefit. Mr. Griffith admitted in court he took actions to evade sanctions, which are in place to prevent the DPRK from building a nuclear weapon. Justice has been served with the sentence handed down today,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
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Griffith, who helped developed the Ethereum crypto platform and WikiScanner tool, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act last fall. He claimed that he had a personal “fixation” on North Korea and conceded he had been arrogant, per the Daily Beast.
In 2019, Griffith sought to attend the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference but was warned against it by the State Department. Ignoring the warnings, Griffith traveled to China so he could enter North Korea, where he delivered presentations “tailored to the DPRK audience,” according to prosecutors. He also attempted to recruit others to join him on his trip, officials said. After returning from North Korea, he informed officials at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore about the trip and was arrested the following November.
The IEEPA bans U.S. citizens from “exporting any goods, services, or technology to the DPRK without a license from the Department of the Treasury,” according to the Justice Department. Griffith knew that teaching North Koreans about cryptocurrency could help them evade sanctions, and he answered questions about cryptocurrency from people he knew worked for the North Korean government, prosecutors contended.
“It’ll make it possible to avoid sanctions on money transfers,” he wrote in one text describing crypto techniques, per the Daily Beast.
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His defense sought to weaken his sentencing, highlighting the difficult prison conditions he endured in a New York City federal jail. At one point, he was forced to use his cell’s sink as a toilet, CoinDesk reported.
In similar situations in which U.S. citizens visited sanctioned nations for conferences, offenders only received warning letters from the Treasury Department, his defense team unsuccessfully argued before the judge, who maintained Griffith knowingly flouted the law.
