A U.S. court has ruled that an American man accused of being a hacker and a cryptocurrency expert has pleaded guilty to providing financial advice to North Korea to escape international sanctions.
“As he admitted in court today, Virgil Griffith has agreed to help our country’s most dangerous adversary, North Korea,” the federal court attorney said in a statement. Manhattan, Audrey Strauss in New York.
“Mr. Griffith, along with others, provided financial services to North Korea in cryptocurrencies, helped North Korea escape sanctions and traveled to North Korea for these purposes,” the attorney general said.
Mr. Griffiths have been accused of “endangering the national security of the United States.”
Virgil Griffith, 38, is an American computer scientist who lived in Singapore and was arrested in November 2019 at the Los Angeles airport after attending a conference in Pyongyang a few months ago.
In American justice, he expressed his expertise in cryptocurrency and virtual currency and the way to “escape international sanctions” against the communist regime in Pyongyang.
U.S. Justice also alleges that it proposed “plans to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions between North and South Korea” in violation of international law.
Mr. Griffith will be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison, the verdict will be handed down on Jan. 18, a Manhattan attorney said.
North Korea is subject to a number of international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Nuclear talks with Washington were halted in February 2019 following the failure of the Hanoi summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then US President Donald Trump.
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