Former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been sentenced to 63 months in prison and fined $100,000 for holding a training presentation in North Korea.
In 2019, Virgil Griffith attended a conference in North Korea where he gave a presentation on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Upon his return to the US, Griffith was arrested and taken into custody. He was charged with violating the Emergency Economic Action Act (IEEPA) and could receive 20 years in prison.
Virgil Griffith and his lawyers flatly denied the charges. Griffith denied that he helped North Korea circumvent U.S. government sanctions with cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and did not provide any services related to this technology in the country. Moreover, Griffith stated that the prosecutor’s office had not established the very fact of the crime.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke out in support of Griffith. He drew the court’s attention that the information provided was publicly available in the form of open source software. Buterin urged the US to focus “on the genuine and harmful corruption that all countries are fighting, and not to persecute programmers who make speeches that repeat publicly available information.” He stated that he would sign a petition asking for Griffith’s release.
“Geopolitical openness is great. And it’s just great when a person who has been set against an “evil enemy” since childhood goes to him and listens to him. The world would be a better place if more people did this. This virtue works everywhere. I don’t think Virgil was of any real help in anything bad. He just gave a presentation of open source software and it was not a training in hacking,” said the Ethereum co-founder.
Buterin also asked the Los Angeles prosecutor to reverse the decision to place Griffith in custody. At the same time, he noted that the Ethereum Foundation did not delegate authority to Griffith to travel to North Korea, did not pay or provide any support – it was Griffith’s own decision.
In December 2019, at a preliminary hearing in the case, a judge ruled that Griffith was released on $1 million bail pending trial. He considered that the prosecutor’s office had enough evidence and grounds for the case to go to court, and also took into account the requests of prominent figures in the crypto community in defense of the accused. At the same time, Griffith was blocked by a court decision from access to all his accounts.
Despite a positive court decision to release Griffith on bail, he remained in prison until the end of 2019. The basis for the detention was the developer’s correspondence with his parents, which came into the possession of the prosecutor’s office. According to the prosecutor, Griffith planned to renounce his United States citizenship, move to North Korea and run a “money laundering business” there.
In late December 2019, by decision of the Southern District of New York, Griffith was released on a $1 million bail secured by his relatives’ real estate, on the condition that he and his parents stay permanently in Alabama. The prosecutor’s office was not satisfied with this decision, justifying its position by the fact that Griffith is highly likely to escape in order to abscond from justice.
Virgil Griffith remained at large until July 2021, when the prosecution petitioned Judge Kevin Castel to return him to custody. According to authorities allegedly obtained from Coinbase, Griffith violated his terms of release when he attempted to access his blocked Coinbase account with about $1 million in crypto assets through a third party, his mother. The court granted the petition, and Griffith was again detained and placed in prison.
From the very beginning of the hearings, Griffith and his lawyers denied all charges brought by the prosecutor’s office. However, in September last year, after two years of pre-trial detention, Griffith made a deal with the investigation, and, unexpectedly for the parties supporting him, pleaded guilty. At the same time, the maximum sentence was reduced from 20 years to 78 months. On April 12, 2022, Virgil Griffith was sentenced to 63 months in prison and fined $100,000. The court will deduct the pre-trial arrest time from the total sentence.
Matthew Russell Lee, correspondent for the online edition of Inner City Press, attended the trial of Griffith and conducted an online report on his Twitter blog. According to the information provided by the journalist, the court did not fully accept Griffith’s repentance, believing that he quite consciously taught people how to circumvent sanctions using cryptocurrency tools and technologies.
The defense side asked for leniency, referring to a special form of Griffith’s mental disorder – “narcissistic personality disorder.”
Allegedly, this is precisely what explains the burning desire of their client to look like a “rebel hero”, to be in the spotlight, and also affects the inadequate assessment of their own actions and achievements.
However, according to the court, the materials at its disposal show the opposite. Judge Kevin Kastel, drawing on early speeches by Griffith and his supporters, believes that the defendant has no moral and ideological restrictions and “he is ready to play both sides as long as he is in the center.”
Recall that earlier the prosecution asked the court to impose a penalty on Griffith in the form of a $ 1 million fine and a maximum prison term of 20 years in order to deter him and others from “similar behavior in the future.”
