Planet Money - The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

The trip that changed Tigran Gambaryan's life forever was supposed to be short — just a few days. When he flew to Nigeria in February of 2024, he didn't even check a bag. Tigran is a former IRS Special Agent. He made his name investigating high-profile dark web and cryptocurrency cases. Some colleagues called him the 'Crypto Wizard' because of his pioneering work tracing crypto transactions for law enforcement. Since 2021, he's worked at the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.Tigran was in Nigeria as a sort of envoy. He was supposed to meet with government officials and show them that Binance – and crypto itself – was safe, reliable, and law-abiding.One of the most important meetings was at the headquarters of the Office of the National Security Advisor. He says officials there made him wait hours. And when officials finally came into the room, they accused Binance of a host of crimes and of tanking the Nigerian economy. They then told Tigran that they weren't going to let him leave Nigeria until they were satisfied that Binance was going to remedy the situation.On today's show, in a collaboration with Click Here from Recorded Future News, we hear about Tigran's eight month detention in Nigeria. In his first recorded interview after his release, he shares details about his captivity, how he survived one of Nigeria's most infamous prisons, and how he got out.Support our show and hear bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or on npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Heads up, this episode has a few curse words in it. This is Planet Money from NPR. There is this video that I've not been able to stop thinking about since I first saw it. It's a short video, just 39 seconds long, of a bearded man with a tight haircut, a white t-shirt, and a gold chain. And he is filming himself selfie- style, but he seems to be holding the phone at this weird angle, as if he's trying to hide it from someone. Hello, my name is Sigrid Gambirian. I'm the head of financial prime compliance for Binance. I've been detained by the Nigerian government for a month. I don't know what's going to

happen to me after today. If this is ringing a bell, it first made the rounds last spring. I've done nothing wrong. I asked the United States government to assist me. I need your help, guys. I don't know if I'll be able to get out of this without your help. Please help. Then the video just ends. It's haunting. I first heard about this guy in this video from legendary reporter, Dina Templarastin. Hey, Dina. Hey there. Dina, you've been following this story, the story of Tigran Gambarian, since day one. Yeah, I knew Tigran.

He's a former IRS investigator. He's American. And I had 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 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. Yeah, and that saga is our episode today. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Nick Fountain.

And I'm Dina Temple-Raston, the host of Click Here, a cyber and intelligence podcast. Tigran's story is about more than one man in a notorious Nigerian prison. It's about how people in places without stable economies have found refuge in cryptocurrency, how crypto can undermine state power, and how that state power fights back. 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 we got out. Oh my gosh, you look great.

I'm so worried. Hey, how you doing? Good to see you. It's good to see you too. Let me tell you a little bit about Tigran Gamberian. 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. 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. Some backstory. Tigran made his name working for the IRS. He was a special agent there, a financial investigator, and he focused on investigating cryptocurrency and cyber cases. And Tigran 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. But Tigran suspected that these transactions were not as anonymous as people thought. So night after night, with his infant daughter on his lap, he stared at long strings of letters and numbers, trying to figure out a way to follow transactions from one place to another. And through just determination, he was able to do it. He was able to trace transactions.

This completely revolutionized high-tech crime fighting. He was involved in just about every crypto-related bust or investigation in the 2010s. Alphabet, 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.

And over the next decade, he became kind of this evangelist for crypto. He believed that if done correctly, crypto could solve a lot of the problems in the financial system and maybe be more transparent than traditional banks. And so in 2021, Tigran decided to leave government and take his talents to the largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, a company called Binance. Binance is what's called an exchange, basically a place to buy or sell crypto. And it had this kind of sketchy reputation

as a place for money launderers and criminals. 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. I don't handle business. I don't have nothing to do with any products. My whole core duties,

and which is all I do is assist law enforcement. So officially, Tikrin was hired to help with law enforcement and compliance, but unofficially, he was sort of an ambassador for Binance and for crypto itself. He was there to send the message. Crypto's Wild West days were over. That shady stuff Binance was doing was in the past. Today's Binance is law-abiding and

we're here to help. Which is why in February of last year he found himself in Nigeria. He was there to meet top government and law enforcement officials. We agreed to go out there meet with them being okay you know what if you need anything just to kind of even, you know, go above and beyond and help them out. Now Nigeria as a country has a complicated relationship with crypto. By the time Tigran had arrived last year, their currency, the Naira, had been through years of turmoil. They had unpegged the Naira from the US dollar.

Inflation had been high like 30% annually. And so people had been buying up crypto as a kind of store of value. Instead of putting savings in a bank, they would buy Bitcoin or Ethereum. In 2024, Nigeria had the second largest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the world. 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. Which brings us back to Tigran. Tigran's trip to Nigeria was going to be quick, just a few days of back-to-back meetings. He didn't even check a bag. The most important meeting was at the big law enforcement intelligence agency Tigran's trip to Nigeria was going to be quick, just a few days of back-to-back meetings. He didn't even check a bag.

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. When he showed up, they're like, oh, just come in, just sit down. They'll come in in a little bit. We waited for a couple of hours. Were you worried that you were waiting that long? It started getting a little weird. 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. And the two of them were waiting to meet with the head of the NSA to talk through how Binance and Nigeria could work better together. But that meeting never happened. Instead, eventually a bunch of Nigerian officials filed into the room. None of them were really making eye contact with Tigran or Nadim. And when the meeting did start, Tigran realized it was not what they signed up for. One of the guys who was actually responsible for this, he comes in, kind of slaps a folder on the table, starts saying, you know, you've destroyed Nigerian economy.

The Nigerian authorities told them that Binance had tanked their currency, that they had laundered money and that they'd evaded taxes. According to Tigran, they basically said, we are not going to let you leave until we are satisfied that Binance is on the up and up. Among other things they said they wanted Binance to pay those taxes and also some fines and they said they wanted more control over the platform, including information on Binance's users. We want user records for every single Nigerian user. Until that's done you can't leave. 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 find companies and seize their assets. But Binance had no assets to seize or to hold as collateral. In a sense, Tigran and Nadeem became collateral. And where might the Nigerian government have gotten the idea of detaining someone from Binance and slapping them with enormous fines? We do have some breaking news on a major crypto company, Binance. The CEO… Oh yeah, it was us, the U.S. We are here today to announce that the Justice Department has secured felony guilty pleas

from the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. 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 Chung-Pen Zhao, also known as CZ. 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. This is one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained from a corporate defendant in a criminal matter. The announcement rocked the crypto world and yeah it might have planted an idea in the minds of Nigerian officials. Back in Nigeria, Tigran and the business guy Nadim 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,

okay then call your bosses, because until that gets cleared up, we're keeping you here in Nigeria. Authorities took them to a safe house in the capital. Apparently the conditions there weren't all that bad. Tigran had access to a phone. He could talk to a lawyer. Nadeem convinced the guards to buy satellite TV so they could watch movies. And the food Tigran says access to a phone. He could talk to a lawyer. Nadim convinced the guard to buy

satellite TV so they could watch movies. And the food, Tigrin says, it was good. There was a cook in the house. Nadim was ridiculous the whole time. It was crazy. He would make crazy requests and kept asking for smoothies in the morning. The cook would make him two smoothies, like an avocado smoothie and whatever. Weeks passed like this. Not much action, a lot of smoothies. Tigran took to push-ups and pull-ups to stay fit and take the edge off his anxiety, but Nadim was getting more and more freaked out and Tigran tried to comfort him. And then one day, about a month after they were detained, things took a turn.

Tigran went to Nadim's room. It was dark, the lights were out, So I went up and knocked on his door. He didn't answer. He opened the door. I was like, Nadim, Nadim, are you there? No response. I just see, you know, just a mountain of blankets. Right.

And pillows. And I'm like, there's a foot stick in there from underneath the blanket. And I pull it off. It was, he had stuffed a water bottle inside a sock. Put it there, so. Oh my God. Yeah.

Nadim had escaped. And Tigran says at this moment he felt his heart sink. For weeks he and Nadim had been in this together. He thought surely Nadim had at least left an explanation. But when Tigran looked around for a note, he couldn't find one. And in this moment, Tigran realized it was going to be just him, all by himself against the government of Nigeria. Point him like I'm alone. And so I'm now I'm trying to figure out how do I handle this?

What should I do? He knew he had what minutes before the guards figured out that Nadeem had escaped. And he knew that once that happened, all hell would break loose. At the very least, he'd probably lose access to his phone and the world. So we tiptoed out to the courtyard where no one could overhear him, and he pulled out that phone and hit record. Hello, my name is Sigrid Gambirian. I'm the head of financial prime compliance.

Yeah, this was that haunting video that made the rounds. phone and hit record. Hello, my name is Tigran Gambirian. I'm the head of financial prime compliance. Yeah, this was that haunting video that made the rounds. I'll probably be able to get out of this without your help. Please help. 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 then Binance was operating without a license. Soterios Johnson And once he was arraigned, he was not sent back to the guest house with the satellite TV and the chef. This time, his treatment was much worse. Michael B. Johnson The treating me like Hannibal Lecter when they're transporting me, it was ridiculous. Like two trucks full of people with rifles, one in the front, one in the back.

It was insane. The prison he ended up in is infamous. It's called Kujo. It's where Nigeria puts ISIS militants. It's actually one of the largest prisons in Nigeria. Tigrim wasn't put in general population. He wasn't gonna be bunking with some ISIS guy. He got his own cell.

It was just a cell with no air conditioning, nothing, cockroaches. There's a mattress and a ton of cockroaches. It's just everywhere, just like infestation. 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 first night he was there he gets an opportunity to buy one. One of the guard comes in, he didn't ask, he just opens the door, sits down in bed and says like I'll sell you a phone for $25,000 I'm like what? He's like yeah you're a Binance executive, you're a billionaire, you can afford this. I'm like I'm sorry you got the wrong guy. He's like, okay, fine, $5,000.

I'm like, no, I'm like, I'm not a billionaire. Yeah, it was at this moment that Tigran starts to realize that while he was locked away, the Nigerian government had been painting this picture of him as not only the cause of all of Nigeria's money problems, the inflation, the speculation, but also as a billionaire, an evil one, and a crook. How was Tigran gonna get out of here?

That is after the break. Eventually, Tigrin did get a phone, and he was able to talk with his family. He says he spent hours on video calls with his 10-year-old daughter. They'd talk while she played video games, late into the night. And on those calls, he says he tried to pretend things were normal, that he was just on a long business trip. But later he found out that she'd known all along. She'd googled him. 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. I just can't believe that I'm still here. I spent my 40th birthday in Nigerian prison, for God's sake. And then one morning, he wakes up feeling sick. It feels kind of like food poisoning. So the next thing I know, I'm thrown up.

In May, about three months into his detention, Tigrin got malaria. Pretty common in Nigeria. It's treatable. Think like a bad flu, but worse. But if it is not treated, it can be debilitating. Even deadly. And Tigran was not getting good care. His malaria led to pneumonia. Eventually he became bedridden. And that aggravated some of his back problems. He ended up unable to walk. He needed a wheelchair to get around. 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. Yeah, there's this incredible video from last September. Tigrin is in this echoey courthouse hallway with a single crutch. He's struggling to walk and he's getting more and more frustrated. Because there is a guard in brown fatigues trying to get him into a courtroom. But when Tigran keeps reaching for the guard' hands, the guy will not help.

Every few steps, Tigran has to rest against the wall. This video, showing how much Tigran's health had declined, made it onto social media. And it seemed to shift things in his favor. Yeah, but the key thing that turned the tide for Tigran was when Nigerian prosecutors actually started to lay out their case against him in court filings. The only evidence that they had in my charging documents was in my business card that said I was head of the global intelligence investigations. In my entire charging records against me, my business card is the only evidence in there.

Tigran was expecting the Nigerian prosecutors to at least have gone through the motions of building a case against him. But instead, what they had tying Tigran to these alleged crimes was a single sheet of paper, a photocopy of his business card. And that, that was the moment it seems that Tigran's case really changed for the U.S. government. 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. 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 like the one the US had brought against CZ, the founder of Binance. The US case was years in the making. They had reams of evidence, emails, voice messages, transactions.

Nigeria had none of that. And when this came out, US officials seemed to kick it up a notch. The US strategy to get Tigran out was, it seems, pretty simple. A full court diplomatic press. For months, U.S. officials were told to bring up Tigran at the beginning of every meeting they had with Nigerian officials. With the foreign minister, the finance minister, the national security advisor, but also the minister of culture, the minister of sports.

And this strategy went all the way to the top, all the way to then President Joe Biden. According to four people close to the case, Biden was scheduled to meet with Nigeria's President Tanubu. That was last September at the UN General Assembly in New York. And US officials had signaled that Biden was going to raise Tigran's case in those meetings. And according to my sources, President Tanubu ended up skipping the entire UN General Assembly, maybe to avoid the embarrassment of that meeting. Tigran's health, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate. And eventually the pressure, or maybe the embarrassment, became too much.

The Nigerian government announced they were going to release Tigran on humanitarian grounds. They said they were just releasing him so that he could get medical care. Binance set a private plane to pick up Tigran. They flew him to Rome. And then he took a commercial flight back to the US. All told, he spent about eight months in detention. He's still recovering from the medical issues related to getting malaria. And he still works at Binance. By the way, we did reach out to Binance for this

story and they did not respond to our questions about Tigran. 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, and neither do many other crypto companies. 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?

I don't think my wife would let me go back to Nigeria if I wanted to. Or like outside the house. By the way, Tigran and Nadim haven't spoken since Nadim escaped. We did reach out to Nadim. He didn't get back to us. But as for what happened to him, Tigran suspects that he hopped a guesthouse wall, got an Uber to the airport, and caught the first flight out. He had a second passport. In November, Nadim 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. ["DNA Theme Song"] When I said that Dina is a legend, I meant it.

We worked in the same office for a few years and I learned so much from her by osmosis, by watching how she reports. And I'll admit it now to you Dina, by eavesdropping on your phone conversations. If you want to hear more stories like this one, you can check out Dina's show. It's called Click Here. It comes from Recorded Future News. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peasley and Sean Powers. It was edited by Jess Jang.

It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Sina LaFredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to the great Karen Duffin. I'm Dena Temple-Reston. And I'm Nick Fountain. This is NPR. Thank you for listening. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.