"Convicted for Speech", restoring the entire process of Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith being investigated by the FBI

Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was investigated by the FBI and reached a plea agreement for violating the US sanctions against North Korea. Currently, Griffith has been officially sentenced to 63 months in prison and fined $100,000, bringing his shocking and bizarre experience over the past two years to an end.

Journalist Ethan Lou, author of "Once a Bitcoin Miner," attended the conference where Griffith spoke in North Korea. He was asked by prosecutors to file a statement in Griffith's case, but it was never filed in court. Below, he tells his story.

Pyongyang, April 18, 2019

Virgil Griffith had been in North Korea for only a few hours, and he had casually told his companions and local guide that his trip was unauthorized (the United States is the only country in the world that prohibits its citizens from traveling to North Korea without permission).

Griffith, an American in Singapore who works for the Ethereum Foundation, told people at a round dining table at the Pothonggang Hotel on the Pyongyang riverside that he had tried to explain why he wanted to go to Pyongyang for a cryptocurrency conference, but his travel permit was denied. Despite this, he decided to go anyway.

Four days later, in a building shaped like an atom, Griffith told a group of North Koreans how to use blockchain in their negotiations with the United States, where bilateral talks were deadlocked over which side should act first: U.S. economic sanctions or North Korea’s nuclear program.

Griffith said that by connecting North Korea's missiles to a smart contract, both can happen at the same time. "If it is confirmed that the United States has lifted sanctions on North Korea, the missile will be destroyed." Griffith then used the analogy of "shaving my cat" when explaining how this smart contract works. Most of his speech was far-fetched speculation based on publicly available information. Therefore, it is unclear how serious he is about this - he certainly does not take the US government's opposition to his travel seriously.

Not approved

Griffith was a man who kept his mouth shut. Upon returning to Singapore, he immediately went to the local American embassy and informed an agent of his trip. Perhaps he thought he was doing his home government a favor in some way by telling them the story of the isolated kingdom. Griffith had no idea that the meeting would cause waves throughout the U.S. government, with Brandon Cavanaugh, a special agent from the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York, soon joining the investigation, and later three lawyers from the Department of Justice and agents from the Treasury Department.

Court documents paint a vivid picture of FBI agents pursuing Griffith in the days following his trip, as if he had fallen into a trap.

Mysterious Internet person

Griffith was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1983. He has such a messy head of hair that a waiter at a North Korean restaurant described his head as "big." In 2008, before Bitcoin came out, Griffith was called a "mysterious Internet man" by the New York Times as a hacker.

He once put his doctoral studies on hold to participate in the reality show "Revolt of the Nerds." He was also sued for planning to publicize the security loopholes of campus cards, which was later resolved privately. In Griffith's words, he is a person who likes to poke holes in the sky. He once told his parents: "I often throw grenades into the room, and then someone needs to jump on them." A friend described him as looking at life as a video game.

In May 2019, about a month after Griffith met with the State Department agent in Singapore, the FBI contacted him. Griffith was visiting friends in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that’s a bit of a crypto hub, and he rented a small apartment there. The FBI told Griffith they wanted to meet, and he agreed immediately. He didn’t feel he was in any danger. He didn’t hire a lawyer and traveled to New York at his own expense. There, he met with FBI agent Cavanaugh.

Fifth Amendment

Griffith showed off photos of his time in North Korea and offered newspapers and other propaganda he brought home as souvenirs. Pyongyang was a visual eye-opener for Griffith, whose pastel-colored apartment buildings looked like something out of a Wes Anderson movie.

Griffith was so fascinated by the closed-off North Korean culture that he ordered a set of Mao suits. Many North Korean literary works are also a bit funny. Griffith saw a newspaper headline in North Korea that said "Women's Research Institute established under the care of great men" with a touch of irony. A picture album he brought back used the Comic Sans font commonly used in comic books. Griffith cherished his North Korean souvenirs so much that he even sent them to the non-profit Archive for digitization.

However, the government viewed the items Griffith brought back from North Korea very differently. Justice Department lawyer and former U.S. Marine Michael Krouse and his colleagues described Griffith's Mao suit as a "North Korean military-style uniform."

For Agent Cavanaugh, the point of the May meeting was that Griffith knew it was illegal to teach blockchain in North Korea, but he went anyway, planned to go again, and wanted to conduct a token cryptocurrency transaction between North and South Korea. Cavanaugh would not let this go on.

Better find a lawyer

On November 12, while Griffith was on a business trip in Northern California, the FBI contacted him again. Griffith and Cavanaugh met again at the FBI's San Francisco office. Griffith was a little shaken by the previous meeting, but he still did not hire a lawyer. This time, Griffith allowed the FBI to search his phone.

Before another meeting with the FBI, he talked about it with his friend Eric Corley, an editor at a hacker magazine to which Griffith had contributed. Corley recalled trying to dissuade Griffith from going to the meeting: “I kept warning him it was a trap.”

But Griffith "insisted" on going and "telling the truth" without a lawyer because he felt that what he said in North Korea was just public information. He didn't think he had done anything wrong. Shortly after the meeting, Griffith "believed that the FBI fully understood his intentions," and Corley thought Griffith's views were "strangely funny."

North Korea has been accused of serious human rights violations and developing nuclear weapons in violation of the international order. It has long been subject to economic sanctions led by the United States and other countries, which prohibit North Korea from participating in international trade. The United States can do this because it effectively controls the global financial infrastructure. Cryptocurrency is a theoretically feasible way for North Korea to bypass sanctions. After all, North Korea has been accused of hacking and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Griffith's trip triggered red flags within the US government.

After Griffith met with the FBI in San Francisco, the New York Department of Justice opened an investigation against him. But not without objections. Kyle Wirshba, a lawyer at the Department of Justice and a graduate of Harvard Law School, learned that the Treasury Department had objections to the case. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) felt that this was a "gray area" and that if Griffith's speech in North Korea was just public information, not targeted content, it might not be illegal.

The question of whether the Justice Department knew the specific nature of Griffith's speech became critical. If the matter went to trial, it would require the testimony of Treasury's experts. That afternoon, Wirshba raised the issue with FBI agent Cavanaugh. He also wrote to his lawyer colleague Krouse: "So, this is a problem."

By that time, the Justice Department was facing another problem: Griffith was finally feeling the heat of the situation. He knew he had told the FBI that North Korean attendees had gained a better understanding of cryptocurrency after the meeting, that he had admitted that his conversation amounted to "non-zero technology transfer," and that maybe Cavanaugh didn't believe him when he said he was only talking about public information. So Griffith hired a lawyer.

So, if Griffith stops cooperating with the FBI, will he flee? The FBI considers Griffith a flight risk and needs to arrest him quickly. The FBI tells Griffith not to leave the country, but Griffith is not obliged to comply. The FBI has no reason to detain him if it does not have the support of the Treasury Department. This case does not seem to be that easy.

On Nov. 18, the day Wirshba learned of the Treasury’s objections, the Justice Department spent the afternoon busy. By 8 p.m., it had wiretapped an OFAC lawyer multiple times. “The DOJ has asked us to stick with OFAC,” Cavanaugh emailed colleagues that evening. “Apparently, one or more of them have contacted Griffith. He has become frustrated. I just want you to be aware of the sensitivity of this matter.”

Don't go abroad

Griffith, who lives in Singapore, came to Northern California for business. He knew he was being sought, but he complied with the FBI's request not to leave the United States.

He stayed with friends in Los Angeles and decided to spend Thanksgiving with his parents and sister's family in Baltimore. He told the FBI about these travel plans and sent his itinerary through his lawyer to make sure they knew where he was and he would not try to flee.

Griffith still believes in doing the right thing, and importantly, he's trying to follow the rules. He believes in justice, that good will be rewarded and that innocent people have nothing to fear. In the days ahead, people will ask: Is Griffith a scheming villain? A traitor bent on harming his country? His behavior after his trip to North Korea suggests the answer is complicated.

Despite the serious charges he faces, Griffith is honest. Perhaps his naivety is further cemented by the fact that he is in the legally lax world of cryptocurrency, where the only thing that can guide people is their own moral compass. The deeper he gets stuck in this world, the more Griffith becomes alienated from the wider world outside, with its own values ​​and rules, its own complexities and strengths.

Two days after the frenzy of November 18, another round of emails and a conference call later, the Justice Department had a victory. Attorney Wirshba called OFAC, and OFAC said it would provide a witness to prove Griffith had violated the law if needed at trial.

Arrested

About a week later, on Thanksgiving morning, Griffith was arrested as he boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Baltimore on a complaint filed by New York agent Cavanaugh. The eight-page complaint, which contained more than two thousand words, contained no information other than Griffith's own account of what happened in North Korea. It was just what he had said over the past seven months, which was used as a weapon against him.

It’s the confounding and shocking final chapter of his two-year journey — the story of an adventurous utopian and how his trip to North Korea unsettled the unforgiving forces of geopolitics and national security.

From then on, a new chapter in Griffith's life began. Even though he was later released on bail, he had to abide by strict conditions. Griffith was eventually detained in the notorious New York Metropolitan Detention Center, previewing his unpleasant future. That moment at the airport on Thanksgiving Day 2019, when the law took him away under a dull and cold sky, Griffith experienced the last of his freedom, although he didn't realize it.

Original article: Cointelegraph