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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 Stephen Gambarian.
I'm a head of financial crime compliance for finance. 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 got 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 today, or help.
Please help. Then the video just ends. It's haunting. I first heard about this guy from legendary reporter, Dina Temple-Rastan.
Hey, Dina, you've been following this story of Tigran Gambarian since day one. Yeah, I knew Tigran. He's a former IRS investigator. He's American.
And I 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.
Yeah, that's saga is our episode today. Blowing welcome to Play To Money, I'm Nick Fouton. And I'm Dina Temple-Rastan, the host of Click Here, a cyber intelligence podcast. Tigran's story is about more than one man in a notorious Nigerian prison.
It's about how people and places without stable economies have found refuge in cryptocurrency. How crypto can undermine state power and how that state power bites 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 God, you look great. I'm sorry. Hey, how you doing?
Hey, how you doing? Good to see you, Dina. Let me tell you a little bit about Tigran Gambarian. He's this Armenian American guy.
Super smart, really easy going. 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?
I'll walk through. I guess I'm good. 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 bus or investigation in the 2010s. Alpha Bay, 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 in 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 want to handle business. I have nothing to do with any products. My whole core duties, which is all I do is to sell enforcement. So officially, Tigran 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 a 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 and meet with them, be like, you know what, if you need anything, just to kind of even go over and be on 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 unpagged 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 rabid adoption of crypto meant less control.
As more people started using Binance to trade Naira, the central banks 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 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 and sit down, they'll come in a little bit.
We waited for a couple of hours. Don't worry that you were waiting at home. It's not getting a little weird. Tigran was there with a colleague named Nadim Anjawala.
Nadim 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.
When the guys were responsible for this, he comes in and says, they're 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 had 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 known you can leave. We reached out to the Nigerian authorities for the story. They declined to comment.
What we do know is that the Nigerian government has a history of being quick-defined companies and sees their assets. But Binance had no assets to see, so where to hold his collateral. In a sense, Tigran and Nadim 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 US. 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 US 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 Chang 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 US Bank Secrecy Act. And he had $4.3 billion. This is one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained from a corporate defendant in an incremental 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 Binance 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. And then the business guy 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. Nadim convinced the guard to buy satellite TV so they could watch movies.
And the food Tigran 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. He kept asking for smoothies in the morning. The cook would make him like two smoothies, like an avocado smoothie. 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. I went up and knocked on his door. He had an answer. He opened the door.
I was like, Nadim, Nadim, right there. No response. I just see, you know, just a mountain of blankets. I don't like pillows.
I'm like, there's a foot sticking out from underneath the blanket. I just pulled it off. It was the stuff that water bottle inside the 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. When I'm like, I'm alone. And so I'm not trying to figure out how do I handle this. What should I do?
He knew he had minutes before the guards figured out that Nadim 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 Tigran Gumbarian. I'm a head of financial crime compliance. Yeah, this was that haunting video that made the rounds.
I'm going to 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 the Binance was operating without a license. And once he was arraigned, he was not sent back to the guest house with a satellite TV in the chef. This time, his treatment was much worse. The tritomy had a lecture when they're transporting me.
It was ridiculous. Two trucks with full of people with rifles and one in front of the back. It was insane. The prison he ended up in is infamous.
It's called Kuzha. It's where Nigeria puts ISIS militants. It's actually one of the largest prisons in Nigeria. Tigran wasn't put in general population.
He wasn't going to be bunking with some ISIS guy. He got his own cell. It was just a cell with a no conditioning, nothing cockroaches. There's a mattress and ton of cockroaches.
It's just everywhere. It's 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 night he was there, he gets an opportunity to buy one. When the guard comes in, he doesn't ask. He just opens the door and says, I'll sell your phone.
For $25,000, I'm like, what? It's like, yeah, you were buying an executive. You were a billionaire. You can afford this.
I'm like, I'm sorry. You kept it wrong, guy. He's like, okay, fine, $5,000. I'm like, no, 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 going to get out of here?
That is after the break. Eventually, Tigran 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, but he was just on a long business trip. But later, he found out that she'd known all along. She'd Google them. Months go by.
And even though Tigran's a strong-world person, spending that long in a CD 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 the Nigerian prison, I forgot to say. And then one morning, he wakes up feeling sick.
It feels kind of like good poisoning, so I know I'm thrown up. In May, about three months into his detention, Tigran got malaria. Pretty common in Nigeria. It's treatable.
They click 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 better. 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. Tigran is in this Equi 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. He was too old to help me.
Is this fucked up? What can I do? When Tigran keeps reaching for the guard's 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 that my business card has said I was out of the global intelligence investigations.
In my entire charging records, what can's 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 was the moment, it seems, that Tigran's case really changed for the US government. Yeah, the whole time Tigran had been detained in Nigeria. I've been calling sources at the Justice Department, the White House, and even one high-level State Department officials 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 US saw Nigeria as a partner, maybe because at first blush, Nigeria's case against Tigran seemed so much like the US'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 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, US 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, 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. Finance set up 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 the 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'm only my wife with any company.
Or like outside the house. By the way, Tigran and Nadim haven't spoken since Nadim escaped. We didn't 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 what 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. 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 out 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 Jane, was back checked by Sierra Waters and engineered by Cina Librato. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to the great Karen Duff. I'm Dina Temple Reston.
I'm Nick Fountain. This is NPR. Thank you for listening.