The Untold Story of a Crypto Crimefighter’s Descent Into Nigerian Prison
February 11, 2025 at 01:10AMCryptocurrrency cop Tigran Gambaryan had foiled bitcoin fraud and theft as a special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation, the law enforcement division of the US tax authority. There, he’d pioneered ways to remove the anonymity shrouding Bitcoin trades to unmask criminals and bring them to justice, but he gave it all up to join a private cryptocurrency company called Binance and help them clean up their less-than-stellar record. When Nigerian officials accused Binance of contributing to the devaluation of their currency, the naira, and demanded a $150 million bribe from the company, Gambaryan made a narrow escape to return home to his wife and two children. So why on earth did Gambaryan return, only to be captured and held hostage by the Nigerian government? For Wired, Andy Greenberg unravels the chain of events that put Gambaryan in Nigerian prison and nearly cost him his life.
Still, for months to come, the US government wouldn’t intervene in Gambaryan’s criminal prosecution. The result, for Frentzen, was an appalling situation: After a career in the federal service, the former IRS agent responsible for many of the biggest cryptocurrency criminal busts and seizures in history was left with only hands-off government support in the midst of what appeared to be, itself, a crypto shakedown.
“This guy recovered billions of dollars for the US,” Frentzen remembers thinking, “and we can’t get him out of a hole in Nigeria?”
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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/02/10/the-untold-story-of-a-crypto-crimefighters-descent-into-nigerian-prison/
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