NEW YORK – A prominent United States cryptocurrency promoter and former hacker has pleaded guilty to advising North Korea on using virtual money to avoid international controls, said a court here yesterday.
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 mining, according to the Southern District Court of New York.
A ruling will be announced in January next year.
Griffith, who faces a 20-year prison sentence, worked with others to provide cryptocurrency services and help North Korea evade sanctions, said the court.
He was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2019.
The 38-year-old in April that year attended a conference on blockchain and virtual currencies in Pyongyang, where he spoke about how to use both technologies “to evade sanctions”, said the US Justice Department (DoJ).
Doing so violates US Treasury bans on “exporting any goods, services or technology” to North Korea, put in place in response to the country’s nuclear weapons programme.
After the conference, Griffith “began formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency between DPRK (North Korea) and South Korea, despite knowing that assisting with such an exchange would violate sanctions”, said DoJ.
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, Griffiths 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. – AFP, September 28, 2021
