Dina Temple Raston
Appearances
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
This video, showing how much Tigran's health had declined, made it onto social media. And it seemed to shift things in his favor.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Yeah, the whole time Tigran had been detained in Nigeria, I'd been calling sources at the Justice Department, the White House, and even one high-level State Department official, saying, what are you doing to get this guy out? They wouldn't go into detail, and they weren't authorized to speak on the record, but I got the impression that they were dragging their feet. Maybe because the U.S.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
saw Nigeria as a partner. Maybe because at first blush, Nigeria's case against Tigran seemed so much like the U.S. 's own case against Binance. But after prosecutors submitted their evidence, it became clear that Nigeria's case against Tigran was nothing like the one the U.S. had brought against CZ, the founder of Binance. The U.S. case was years in the making.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
They had reams of evidence, emails, voice messages, transactions. Nigeria had none of that. And when this came out, U.S. officials seemed to kick it up a notch.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
According to four people close to the case, Biden was scheduled to meet with Nigeria's President Tenubu. That was last September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. And U.S. officials had signaled that Biden was going to raise Tigran's case in those meetings. And according to my sources, President Tenubu ended up skipping the entire U.N.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
General Assembly, maybe to avoid the embarrassment of that meeting.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
So today, that story from Tigran himself. We landed the first recorded interview with him since his release. And now we know all the details of his eight months in captivity and how he got out. Let me tell you a little bit about Tigran Gambarian. He's this Armenian-American guy. Super smart, really easygoing. The type of person who has a squat rack and a gaming chair at home.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
For now, he's no longer running the investigations team. He was away for so long, they brought in someone else to do the job, temporarily. Tigran initially went to Nigeria to help the government use crypto for their law enforcement efforts. But that project is pretty much dead. Tigran says Binance doesn't cooperate with Nigerian officials anymore. Neither do many other crypto companies.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
People in Nigeria are still using crypto, but now it's back to the Wild West. And Tigran is kind of over helping them change that. Would you ever go back to Nigeria?
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
In November, Nadeem sent Tigran an email saying he wanted to explain why he left and why he did what he did. Tigran waited two months to respond. And when he did, he basically said, I don't have that much to say to you. You could have at least given me a heads up. I almost died in that prison.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
And a few weeks ago, I went to visit him at his house about an hour outside of Atlanta. Should we take off shoes? Are you guys hungry? No, thank you.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Antiguan is a legend in this world. Before him, just about everyone in law enforcement thought crypto transactions were anonymous, totally untraceable. In fact, that's exactly why criminals in particular seemed to love it. They saw it as a way to commit a crime and leave no fingerprints.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
This completely revolutionized high-tech crime fighting. He was involved in just about every crypto-related bust or investigation in the 2010s. AlphaBay, Mt. Gox, those were him. Silk Road, yeah, him too. When I was reporting on this and calling around law enforcement circles, people kept telling me Tigran figured out how to track all this. They even called him the Bitcoin wizard.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
He was hired as the global head of intelligence and investigations, which meant working with law enforcement across the world, showing them the ways in which he tracked crypto transactions. So in many ways, his job at Binance wasn't that different than what he was doing at the IRS.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Which is why in February of last year, he found himself in Nigeria. He was there to meet top government and law enforcement officials.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
For the Nigerian government, the rapid adoption of crypto meant less control. As more people started using Binance to trade Naira, the central bank's hold on the value of their currency felt like it was slipping away. And so they were starting to blame crypto for a lot of the country's economic problems.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
The most important meeting was at the big law enforcement intelligence agency in Nigeria, known as the National Security Agency, or NSA. Tigran was excited about the meeting.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Teagan was there with a colleague named Nadeem Anjawala. Nadeem was younger. He wasn't a former cop. He was more like Binance's business guy for Africa.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
The Nigerian authorities told them that Binance had tanked their currency, that they'd laundered money, and that they'd evaded taxes.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
We reached out to the Nigerian authorities for this story. They declined to comment. What we do know is that the Nigerian government has a history of being quick to fine companies and seize their assets. But Binance had no assets to seize or to hold as collateral. In a sense, Tigran and Nadim became collateral.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
have some breaking news on a major crypto company, Binance. Oh yeah, it was us, the U.S.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
A few months before Tigran was detained in Nigeria, the U.S. Justice Department announced this huge case against Binance. They'd been investigating the company for years, and they announced that they had reached a plea deal with the founder and former CEO, a guy named Chongpeng Zhao, also known as CZ.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
And he and the company agreed to plead guilty to a bunch of federal charges, including flouting anti-money laundering laws and violations of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. They were fined $4.3 billion.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Back in Nigeria, Tigran and the business guy Nadeem told officials, we're not top finance executives. We can't pay that fine. We can't release that user data. That's way above our pay grade. And Nigerian officials were like, OK, then call your bosses, because until that gets cleared up, we're keeping you here in Nigeria.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
And then one day, about a month after they were detained, things took a turn. Tigran went to Nadeem's room.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
And in this moment, Tigran realized it was going to be just him, all by himself, against the government of Nigeria.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
So he tiptoed out to the courtyard where no one could overhear him. And he pulled out that phone and hit record.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Yeah, I knew Tigran. He's a former IRS investigator. He's American. And I'd interviewed him for a bunch of stories. So I found out pretty quickly that he'd been detained in Nigeria. And I thought they'd hold him for a couple of weeks. I had no idea that it was going to become such a saga.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Two days after he sent that video, Nigerian authorities started officially charging Tigran with tax evasion. They also said he was complicit in helping Binance launder $35.4 million in illegal transactions and that Binance was operating without a license.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Tigran wasn't put in general population. He wasn't going to be bunking with some ISIS guy. He got his own cell.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
By then, the authorities had taken away his phone. But as he looked around him, it looked like all the prisoners had their own phones. And he said, how do I get me one of those? And the first night he was there, he gets an opportunity to buy one.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
Months go by. And even though Tigran's a strong-willed person, spending that long in a seedy prison cell started to wear him down. Not just mentally, but physically.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
But according to Tigran, when he was in public for court appearances, Nigerian officials wouldn't let him use the wheelchair. There were local journalists showing up, and he said officials thought pictures of him in a wheelchair would be bad press and show that he wasn't being taken care of.
Planet Money
The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
And I'm Dina Temple Raston, the host of Click Here, a cyber and intelligence podcast.