Cryptocurrency expert wanted by the FBI after trip to North Korea | 60 Minutes Australia

unassuming and easy going it's hard to believe how chris ems has managed to wedge himself into so much trouble he's stuck in a no man's land caught in the middle of a dangerous and frightening power play between enemies north korea and the united states it started innocently enough when he was invited to the rogue nation for a cryptocurrency conference a bit of a geek chris thought it'd be fun but the u.s got wind of his visit and decided there was evil in the adventure he's now wanted by the fbi accused of involvement in circumventing international sanctions and is facing lengthy jail time the city of jeddah in saudi arabia might be an intriguing place to spend a few days [Music] but chris hems's enthusiasm for this city is understandably wearing thin after being stranded here for six long months life must feel pretty surreal at the moment yeah absolutely tom it's definitely not not where i imagined myself to be at this point in my life chris is trapped in an excruciating and indefinite legal limbo extraordinarily this happy-go-lucky englishman is now on the fbi's most wanted list accused of being an international criminal mastermind it must be the weirdest day of your life when you see your own face on an fbi wanted poster gosh it's not it's not what you want your mum to see that's for sure it's terrifying to be honest i've got two choices right now either i give in and submit to the situation or i stand up strong and i fight it and i stand up for what i believe is the right thing to do chris was detained six months ago at the behest of the united states after attending a conference in saudi arabia and he's been banned from leaving the country ever since the victim of what he insists is one almighty misunderstanding [Music] [Applause] the 30 year old's been charged with the most serious of crimes attempting to violate sanctions against north korea the world's most reclusive state charges that could see him spend the next 20 years in jail i've had my dark days to be honest tom that the best way i've found to deal with it is to keep an upbeat attitude to the whole thing but you know this is very serious i mean i'm looking to up to 20 years inside a federal u.s prison that's not a joke for for anyone a few years ago chris m's was living out his dreams an expert in cryptocurrency he trotted the globe as a regular on the crypto conference circuit i'm here just uh sometimes speaking at one or two events a week sorry it's very quick i'm just trying to plow through it because i know there's a lot of speakers there was a crypto conference anywhere in the world you could imagine any day in the world so i got on this this circuit i was a young guy so you know it was a great experience to really just travel the world and you know earn a little bit of money doing it so anyway thank you very much for your time it was towards the end of 2018 that chris got a strange message in his inbox asking if he'd be interested in taking part in an upcoming event it was to be held in april 2019 in pyongyang billed as north korea's first ever cryptocurrency conference to honestly i thought it was an odd request as as you would but uh you know delving into it a bit more i thought this would be a very interesting and quirky thing to do surely part of you says oh i'm pretty sure doing business with north korea is illegal um i think you know we need to rewind a bit to the context of of of what was going on at the time in the world so you know before we went you had that then u.s president donald trump hugging uh the leader of north korea there was very much a toned down sort of dayton attitude going and so i instinctively went and checked you know is this legal but did a bit of research on you know the un sanctions to see whether speaking at a conference would be illegal um didn't see that as the case so decided to go ahead and say yes [Music] the invitation came from spaniard alejandro cal de benos a man we know very well on 60 minutes if north korea is attacked nuclearly by the united states the world will end as we know it alejandro is the founder of the korean friendship association the lone foreigner who acts as a gatekeeper and great defender of the hermit kingdom in the country they are our parents the parents of the nation and the parents of our ideology he was our guide on our first trip to the country in 2015. how big is the nuclear arsenal of course it's a secret but i can see that is around and nuclear missiles but again with capability to strike any part of the world any including australia if necessary our story provided a handy resource for the americans when at the same time as chris m's alejandro was also named as one of the fbi's most wanted i can facilitate you all kind of contacts directly with or state companies or any department or minister in the country in recent years alejandro's true colours have been revealed by a hidden camera sting that showed him trying to subvert sanctions and secure weapons deals for the north korean regime you know that you must have people that you can fully trust because if only one goes to the cia only one you are forever i think but at the time he got his invitation chris ems insists he had no idea sanctions violations were the motive so what specifically was the pitch you were going to be a keynote speaker yeah so i was going to speak i was also asked if i knew anyone else in the industry the cryptocurrency blockchain industry that would like to attend absolutely no one that i asked uh did attend so that that that should have probably given me uh a warning but it didn't so really was just rocking up there and you know seeing what seeing what would happen north korea's nuclear ambitions are a serious business a relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that's led to the most severe sanctions anywhere in the world so sanctions are hitting north korea pretty hard and trade is basically collapsed so what north korea wants to do is essentially find any all means to get around the sanctions and to make money that's really what they want to do so it's pretty crippling it's pretty crippling yes north korea expert professor justin hastings from sydney university says in more recent years kim jong-un has gone to extreme lengths to bring in the cash anyway he can and so in this secretive rogue state sanctions busting is all about survival if the north korean regime is told that's illegal do they care no from their perspective they don't care right i mean they view anything any sanctions that's placed on them either from the u.s or even from the u.n as basically a sign of u.s hostility to north korea um sort of the idea of that legality is sort of relevant to how north korea operates is just i think it's a western concept chris was one of eight foreigners lured to pyongyang to take part in the conference while puppet master alejandro remained half a world away in spain [Music] after a boozy few nights in north korea eventually the event got underway in pyongyang's showpiece scitec complex such was the fascicle nature of the conference chris even turned up in a north korean outfit he bought at a pyongyang market as a joke that was the way we were getting through it it was just a bit of a laugh you know if if i were going to give this expound the intricacies of sanctions evasion would i wear a silly mao suit in the middle of a room and would i have been up the night before drinking vodka and singing karaoke probably not you've spoken at cryptocurrency conferences around the world how did the one in pyongyang compare i wouldn't call it a conference whatsoever there were probably around 30 to 40 people in the room none of them seemed to be at all engaged in what we were doing they seemed like they had been you know ordered to come here there was really no one there that i would consider obviously i'm not an expert but no one there i would consider to be at all interested in cryptocurrency um and to be honest most people were falling asleep in the room i even fell asleep at one point it was really that dull and boring but the us justice department thinks otherwise releasing these pictures they claim capture a presentation on how to avoid sanctions yet chris is adamant there was nothing discussed that couldn't have been found by a simple search online it really was like a performing monkey you know put in a room no real preparation nothing whatsoever you know do do the show dance the dance so when you flew out of pyongyang did you sort of think to yourself well that was weird but anyway i'm with the rest of my life yeah really i honestly thought that's it that's done let's move on with our life what a quirky thing to have done nine months later chris m's got a frightening wake-up call when one of the other members of the trip was suddenly arrested so hi everyone i'm virgil so maverick cryptocurrency development virgil griffith eventually pled guilty to helping north korea evade sanctions and was jail for more than five years but it became clear the fbi had the organizers of the conference in its sights and it was really honestly it was a sort of 180 change in my whole life from that point if anyone understands north korean mouthpiece alejandro caldebenos and the way he operates it's ulric larsen alefando good to see you again thank you very pleased to be here always you know the former danish chef spent 10 years undercover exposing north korea's illicit arms trade for the extraordinary documentary the mole is alejandro carl de benos a man to be trusted not at all he's a cheater he's a liar i would even go that far to use the word he's a narcissist or psychopath if you don't follow him you don't exist in his world auric infiltrated alejandro's korean friendship association rising through its ranks to become his right-hand man little did the spaniard know that ulrich was fitted with secret cameras and filming everything as alejandro tried to cut deals for weapons and drug production we are under very very heavy sanctions as you may know from the united nations so we have a parallel uh way to do things weapons actually is our main but the problem is weapons in the movement that the u is is very very uh the complicated subject but weapons we can build submarines factories we can bring time factories missiles all meet indeed we're just taking notes in his ten years undercover ulrich would reveal not just the real alejandro but the dark underbelly of the regime's clandestine deals well i think i uncovered quite well how the north korean do the sanction busting and how how easy it is to go and if you have the money and want to buy illegal things from north korea or do business with them it's it's possible so alejandro is a man to go through if you want to do business with north korea but hopefully now people have seen that he's not the guy to go to do you think he's a criminal well i think we expose that's quite well in the mall um he's a criminal and he's a cheater really thanks to alejandro and arguably his own stupidity crypto geek chris m's eventually found himself in deep trouble more than two years after the arrest of fellow conference attendee virgil griffith the fbi finally caught up with him in february this year he was seized at riyad airport as he headed home from another crypto event in saudi arabia i was sort of pulled away into the little ante room um you know and and we sat there for maybe 20 minutes and these guys just had reams and reams of paper printed out paper and then eventually they just said the words to me america then i was led into the cells and locked away that moment where all of a sudden you're locked up in saudi arabia for alleged crimes in in north korea you must scratch your head and think how on earth did my life end up here absolutely it's that surreal feeling you you still wonder you know how did this happen to me you know you know yesterday i was i was at a conference sipping coffee and chatting to someone today i'm sat in jail in a in an airport in saudi arabia after a short stint in custody chris was freed on bail but he's now stuck in saudi arabia banned by a court from leaving the country as the us seeks his extradition the main accusation against you is that you helped organize this cryptocurrency conference is that right no that's completely incorrect so obviously you know i was named on the website as an organizer but i would have no power to organize a conference in north korea it's not the sort of place where you can ring up and book a venue and and uh and you know arrange arrange a trip i had absolutely no power in this situation to do it even if i so wish to so that charge is completely inaccurate were you paid to speak at the conference absolutely not in fact we all paid so we all paid 5 000 euro which we paid in in cash it's an odd concept right that you would pay for the privilege of committing a crime it doesn't make any sense to me with no extradition treaty between saudi arabia and the us chris has spent the last six months in limbo with no end in sight you know my days mostly are spent in the hotel hotel room the us government froze on my bank account so i have to rely on the grace and mercy of you know friends and family really to pay my daily expenses and my hotel bills and it's really a case now for the saudi authorities to make a decision as to whether they wish to extradite me or whether they wish to let me go on my way what do you think will happen if you do get extra data to the us yeah well i don't believe i'll get a fair trial um you know if you put in front of any jury if you put the words sanctions north korea and cryptocurrency you know it's going to be very hard to find an unbiased jury in my view north korea expert professor justin hastings suspects chris m's has become an easy target in this war of attrition between the us and north korea why would they come down hard on this on this particular conference it's possible because it was so public right it was sort of well known uh there were sort of multiple people who were involved it's sort of pretty easy to show that you participate in this conference and so that's why they might do it but certainly you can imagine any sanctions violation prosecution is going to be designed to discourage other people from from potentially even thinking about it for ulrich larsen the mole who infiltrated deep into north korea it's alejandro cal de benos who is squarely to blame for the plight of christopher m's i'm just really shocked now to hear that he is among the most wanted by the fbi and for him sitting in saudi arabia must be terrible it's yeah it's it's not it's completely wrong for him to be in that situation so wrong place wrong time exactly you know he really got caught up in alejandro's spider web alejandra are you happy to start yeah we confronted alejandro about his sanctions busting efforts last year you've been heavily implicated in international deals for for weapons and drugs were you embarrassed to see that footage come out and this time he was the one who felt like he'd walked into a trap this was not why i was coming here for the interview i thank you very much and see you another time alejandro i can see you there what's your objection here we just want to get your response alejandro has left the building yeah the fbi might be after alejandro but he's living in freedom in spain prevented from extradition by the spanish constitution there's no such protection for chris m's though whose anxiety about his future is only matched by the regret that he ever went to north korea in the first place do you feel like you were duped by alejandro cardobinos yeah i do um i do tom because why would you put someone who's got no connection really to north korea that is uh you know a young entrepreneur at the you know the beginning of what what turned out to be until all this kicked off a successful career and really ruined his life my life is is really ruined i mean i've got no career ahead of me now you know even if uh you know we prevail here and the indictment is is removed you know the stigma is always there for just how long he'll have to remain a wanted man he's anyone's guess it feels like i've been left out as this sort of sacrificial lamb having really not done in my view not done anything wrong um you really can't make it up it's really i would say to people it's a bit like living in a james bond movie except they think you're the bad guy not the good guy absolutely but me being this kind of international criminal sanctions dodging mastermind is just not me [Music] hello i'm tom steinfert thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on ninenow.com.eu as well as the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 972,905

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, north korea, fbi, united states, kim jong un, crypto, cryptocurrency, chris emms, america, bitcoin, ethereum, saudi arabia, extradition, most wanted

Id: NGN9CZdDDLg

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 07 2022

Reddit Comments

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[u/PublicCurrency9039]

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