From law enforcement officers to supervision victims, revealing the inside story of Binance executive arrest

Original title: The Untold Story of a Crypto Crimefighters Descent Into Nigerian Prison
Original author:Andy Greenberg , Wired
Original translation: Tracy, Alvin, BitpushNews

As a U.S. federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan pioneered the modern cryptocurrency survey. Later at Binance, he fell into the middle of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange and the government determined to make it pay.

At 8:00 am on March 23, 2024, Tigran Gambaryan woke up on the sofa in Abuja, Nigeria and has been dozing off since the pre-dawn prayers. The houses around him are often accompanied by the humming of nearby generators, but are now unusually quiet. In that silence, the cruel reality of Gambaryan's situation has poured into his mind every morning for nearly a month: Nadeem Anjarwalla, his colleague at the cryptocurrency company Binance, was taken hostage and unable to obtain his passport. They were held in a courtyard owned by the Nigerian government, fenced by barbed wire.

Gambaryan stood up from the sofa. The 39-year-old Armenian American was wearing a white T-shirt, strong and muscular body and covered with Orthodox tattoos on his right arm. His usual shaved head, his neatly trimmed black beard has become short and messy now because he hasn't shaved for a month. Gambaryan finds the chef in the compound and asks her if she can buy him some cigarettes. Then he walked into the inner courtyard of the house and began to walk around anxiously, calling his lawyer and other contacts from Binance, and restarting his daily efforts, in his words, "Fuck it up." One question.”

Just the day before, the two Binance employees and their cryptocurrency giant employers were told they were about to be charged with tax evasion. The two men appear to be sandwiched in the middle of a bureaucratic conflict that takes place between an irresponsible foreign government and the most controversial players in the cryptocurrency economy. Now, not only are they forcibly held, but they have no end to see and are also charged as criminals.

Gambaryan talked on the phone for more than two hours, and the courtyard began to be scorched by the rising sun. When he finally hung up the phone and returned to the house, he still didn't see any trace of Anjarwalla. Before dawn that morning, Anjarwalla went to the local mosque to pray, and the guardians who accompanied him were taking care of him. When Anjarwalla returns to the house, he tells Gambaryan that he is going to go back upstairs to sleep.

It's been a few hours since then, so Gambaryan goes up to the second floor bedroom to see his colleagues. He pushed open the door and found Anjarwalla seemed to be asleep, his feet sticking out from under the sheets. Gambaryan called him at the door but received no response. For a moment, he was worried that Anjarwalla might have another panic attack—the young British-Kenyan Binance executive who had been sleeping in Gambaryan’s bed for several days, was too anxious to spend the night alone.

Gambaryan walked through the dark room—he heard that the house’s government guardians were defaulting on electricity bills and the generator lacked diesel, so it was common for power outages throughout the day—he put his hands on the blanket. Strangely, the blanket sank, as if there was no real human body underneath.

Gambaryan pulled out the sheet. He noticed a T-shirt underneath with a pillow stuffed inside. He looked down at his feet stretching out from the blanket and now he realized that it was actually a sock with a water bottle inside.

Gambaryan did not call Anjarwalla anymore, nor did he search the house. He already knew his Binance colleague and inmate had escaped. He also immediately realized that his situation would get worse. He didn't know the situation would be worse - he would be put in a Nigerian prison, charged with money laundering, and could be sentenced to 20 years in prison, unable to access medical services even if his health deteriorated to the point of death, while also Used as a pawn for the multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency ransomware program.

At that moment, he simply sat silently on the bed, in the darkness 6,000 miles from home, considering the fact that he is now completely alone.

TIGRAN GAMBARYAN The intensifying Nigerian nightmare stems at least in part from a conflict that lasted fifteen years. Since the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto revealed Bitcoin to the world in 2009, cryptocurrencies have promised a liberal holy grail: digital currencies that are not controlled by any government, and can cross borders unbridled, It seems as if it exists in a completely different dimension. However, the reality today is that cryptocurrencies have become a multi-trillion dollar industry, largely run by companies with gorgeous offices and highly paid executives – legal and law enforcement agencies in these countries are able to cryptocurrencies with Companies and their employees put pressure on the same thing they do to any other real-world industry.

Before becoming one of the world's most well-known victims and encountering victims of disorderly fintech and global law enforcement conflicts, Gambaryan embodies this conflict in another way: as the most effective and innovative cryptocurrency full-time law enforcement in the world One of the personnel. For the decade before joining Binance in 2021, Gambaryan served as a special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), where he enforced the enforcement of tax authorities. During his tenure at IRS-CI, Gambaryan pioneered the technology to track cryptocurrencies and identify suspects by parsing the Bitcoin blockchain. With this "fund tracking" tactic, he destroyed one cybercrime after another and completely subverted the myth of Bitcoin's anonymity.

Since 2014, after the FBI seized the Silk Road dark web drug market, it was Gambaryan who tracked Bitcoin and revealed two corrupt federal agents who stole more than 1 million when investigating the market USD – This is the first time that blockchain evidence has been included in a criminal indictment. Over the next few years, Gambaryan helped track $500 million worth of Bitcoin stolen from the first cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, and finally confirmed a group of Russian hackers to be the mastermind behind the theft.

In 2017, Gambaryan worked with blockchain analytics startup Chainalysis to create a secret Bitcoin tracking method that successfully found and helped the FBI seize the server hosting AlphaBay. AlphaBay is a dark web crime market that is estimated to be 10 times the size of the Silk Road. A few months later, Gambaryan played a key role in destroying the crypto-funded video network of child sexual abuse, Welcome to Video, the largest market of such a kind to date. The operation resulted in the arrest of 337 users worldwide and the rescue of 23 children.

Finally, in 2020, Gambaryan and another IRS-CI agent tracked and seized nearly 70,000 bitcoins that were stolen from the Silk Road by a hacker years ago. At today's price, these Bitcoins are worth $7 billion, becoming the largest confiscation of any currency type in history, flowing into the U.S. Treasury Department.

"The cases he was involved in cover almost all the largest cryptocurrency cases at the time," said former U.S. Attorney Will Frentzen, who worked closely with Gambaryan and prosecuted the crimes revealed by Gambaryan. “He was very innovative in his investigation, took a way that many people had never thought of, and was very selfless in treating honors.” In his fight against cryptocurrency crime, Frentzen said: “I don’t think anyone is more about this field than he does with this field than he does. Have a greater impact."

After that legendary career, Gambaryan turned to the private sector and made a decision that shocked many of his government colleagues who had worked with him. He became the head of the Binance investigation team. Binance is a massive cryptocurrency exchange that handles tens of billions of dollars in daily transactions and is known for its indifference to whether users violate the law.

When Gambaryan joined Binance in fall 2021, the company had become the subject of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation. Ultimately, the findings showed that Binance handled billions of dollars in transactions that violated anti-money laundering laws and bypassed international sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Syria and the Russian-occupied Ukraine region. The Justice Department also noted that the company directly handled over $100 million in cryptocurrency transactions from the Russian dark web crime market Hydra, and even in some cases, sources of funding include the sale of child sexual abuse materials and funding that are identified as terrorist organizations. .

Some of Gambaryan's old colleagues privately expressed dissatisfaction with his career change, and even believed that he "selled himself to the enemy." However, Gambaryan firmly believes that he is actually taking on the most important role in his career. As part of Binance’s move to clean up the company’s image after years of rapid expansion, Gambaryan formed a new investigative team within the company, recruiting many top agents from the IRS-CI and other law enforcement agencies around the world and helping Binance We have carried out unprecedented cooperation with law enforcement agencies.

Gambaryan said his team has successfully helped crack cases of child sexual abuse, terrorists and organized crime worldwide by analyzing data that exceeds the combined volume of the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange. "We have assisted thousands of cases around the world. I may have a greater influence in Binance than when I was in law enforcement," Gambaryan once told me. "I am very proud of the work we do, if anyone questioned me. I’m always willing to debate the decision to join Binance.

While Gambaryan helped Binance to create a more law-abiding image, the shift does not erase the company’s history as an illegal exchange or save it from the consequences of past criminal acts. In November 2023, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at a press conference that Binance agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine and confiscation, one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. criminal justice history. The company's founder and CEO Zhao Changpeng was fined $150 million and sentenced to four months in prison.

The United States is not the only country that has dissatisfaction with Binance. By early 2024, Nigeria also began to accuse the company not only of compliance violations it admitted in the U.S. plea agreement, but also of Binance accused of exacerbating the devaluation of the Nigerian currency Naira. From the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, the Naira depreciated by nearly 70%, and Nigerians have converted their own currencies into cryptocurrencies, especially "stable coins" pegged to the US dollar.

Amaka Anku, head of Africa at Eurasia Group, said the real reason for the depreciation of the Naira is that the government of Nigeria’s new president, Bola Tinubu, relaxed exchange rate restrictions between the Naira and the U.S. dollar, and that the Nigerian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves were unexpectedly low. However, when the Naira began to depreciate, cryptocurrencies, as an unregulated way to sell the Naira, further exacerbating the depreciation pressure. “You can’t say Binance or any crypto exchanges directly cause this devaluation,” Anku said, “but they do exacerbate the process.

For years, cryptocurrency proponents have envisioned that Satohi's invention would provide a safe haven for citizens of countries facing an inflation crisis. The moment finally came, and the government of Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, was furious. In December 2023, a committee of Nigerian parliament asked senior Binance officials to attend a hearing in the capital Abuja to explain how they corrected the alleged mistakes. To cope with this situation, Binance convened a delegation of Nigeria, as a symbol of the company’s commitment to collaborate with global law enforcement agencies and governments, Tigran Gambaryan, a former federal agent and star investigator, naturally became a member of the delegation.

However, before extreme measures such as coercion and hostage abduction, (the perpetrator) first made a request for bribery.

In January 2023, Gambaryan had just arrived in Abuja for a few days and the itinerary was smooth. To show goodwill, he met with investigators from the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). EFCC is basically the corresponding agency Gambaryan once worked at the IRS, responsible for combating fraud, investigating government corruption and other tasks, and discussing the possibility of providing cryptocurrency investigation training to employees of the agency. He then attended a roundtable meeting with Binance seniors and members of the Nigerian House of Representatives, and everyone promised each other in a harmonious atmosphere that they would resolve their differences together.

When Gambaryan arrived in Nigeria, it was EFCC detective Olalekan Ogunjobi who received him at the airport. Ogunjobi has read Gambaryan's career and expressed great admiration for his legendary achievements as a federal agent. Throughout the itinerary, Ogunjobi had dinner with Gambaryan almost every night at the hotel, Transcorp Hilton, Abuja. Gambaryan shares his experience with Ogunjobi on crypto crime investigations, how to handle cases, how to form a task force, and more. They exchanged a lot of investigation experience. When Gambaryan presented his book "Tracers in the Dark" to Ogunjobi and signed it, Ogunjobi asked him to sign it.

One night, while Gambaryan and Ogunjobi and a group of Binance colleagues were dining at the table, a Binance employee received a call from a company lawyer. After the greetings, the lawyer told Gambaryan that the meeting with Nigerian officials was not actually as friendly as it seemed. Officials are now asking for $150 million to resolve Binance’s problem in Nigeria — and requesting payments through cryptocurrency to transfer money directly to officials’ crypto wallets. Even more shockingly, officials hinted that the Binance team would not be able to leave Nigeria until the payment was in place.

Gambaryan was shocked that he didn't even have time to explain or say goodbye to Ogunjobi, so he hurriedly packed up Binance's staff, hurriedly left the restaurant, and returned to the meeting room of the Transcorp Hilton hotel to discuss the next solution. Paying this obvious bribe would violate the United States' Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. If refused, they may be detained indefinitely. Ultimately, the team decided to take a third option: leave Nigeria immediately. They spent the whole night in the conference room, planning how to get all Binance employees on board as soon as possible, change flights, and advance departure time until the next morning.

The next morning, the Binance team gathered on the second floor of the hotel, and the luggage was packed, and they tried to avoid passing through the hall in case Nigerian officials might be waiting for them in the hall to stop them from leaving. Everyone took a taxi to the airport, passed the security check nervously, and boarded the plane and returned home successfully. No problems occurred during the whole process. Everyone felt as if they had escaped a disaster.

Shortly after returning to the suburbs of Atlanta, Gambaryan received a call from Ogunjobi. Gambaryan said Ogunjobi was very disappointed by the bribery request from the Binance team and was shocked by the actions of his fellow Nigerians. Ogunjobi suggested Gambaryan report the bribery incident to Nigerian authorities and ask them to launch an anti-corruption investigation.

Eventually, Ogunjobi arranged a call between Gambaryan and EFCC official Ahmad Sa'ad Abubakar. Abubakar was introduced as a right-hand assistant to Nigeria's national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu. Ogunjobi told Gambaryan that Ribadu was an anti-corruption fighter and even gave a speech on TEDx. Now, Ribadu invites Gambaryan to meet him in person to resolve Binance’s problems in Nigeria and to thoroughly investigate the truth about the bribery incident.

Gambaryan told his Binance colleagues about the situation on the phone, which sounded like an opportunity to solve the company’s plight in Nigeria. So Binance executives and Gambaryan began to think that perhaps he could use the invitation to return to Nigeria and unravel the company’s increasingly complex relationship with the Nigerian government. Although the idea sounds very risky – after all they had just fled the country a few weeks ago – Gambaryan believes he received a friendly invitation from a powerful official and received personal assurance from his friend Ogunjobi. Binance local staff also told Gambaryan that they had verified that the solution was reliable.

Gambaryan told his wife Yuki about the bribery incident and the invitation to return to Nigeria. For her, the proposal was obviously very dangerous. She repeatedly asked Gambaryan not to go.

Now Gambaryan admits that perhaps he still retained the way of thinking as a federal agent in the United States—the kind of responsibility and security identity. "I think that's the part I left behind before: when the duty is called, you do it," he said. "I was asked to go."

So, in what he now considers to be one of the most unwise decisions in his life, Gambaryan packed his luggage, kissed Yuki and his two children, and set off early on February 25 to board the flight to Abuja.

The second trip started with Ogunjobi’s airport pick-up, and Ogunjobi once again assured him that he would repeatedly comfort him on his way to the Transcorp Hilton hotel and during dinner. This time, only Binance East Africa manager Nadeem Anjarwalla, a newly graduated Kenyan from Stanford University, has a baby in Nairobi at home.

However, when Gambaryan and Anjarwalla walked into the meeting with Nigerian officials the next day, they were surprised to find that Abubakar was present with EFCC and staff from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Soon, the focus of the meeting became clear: the meeting was not about corruption in Nigeria. At the beginning of the meeting, Abubakar asked about Binance’s cooperation with Nigerian law enforcement agencies and then turned the topic to the EFCC’s request for transaction data from Binance’s Nigerian users. Abubakar said Binance only provided data from the past year, not all the data he requested. Gambaryan felt he was raided, explaining that it was due to negligence caused by temporary requests and promised to provide all the required data as soon as possible. Although Abubakar seemed a little dissatisfied, the meeting continued and everyone finally exchanged business cards.

Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were left in the corridor, waiting for the next appointment. After a while, Anjarwalla goes to the bathroom. When he came back he said he heard some angry voices from the nearby conference room from some of the officers he had just met, Gambaryan remembered saying that.

After waiting for nearly two hours, Ogunjobi returned and took them into another meeting room. Gambaryan remembers that the officials in this conference room looked solemn and the atmosphere was extremely serious. Everyone sat silently, as if waiting for someone to come-Gambaryan didn't know who that person was. He noticed a shocked expression on Ogunjobi's face and did not dare to look at him. "What the hell happened?" he thought to himself.

At this time, a middle-aged man named Hamma Adama Bello walked into the room. He is an EFCC official, wearing a grey suit and unshaven beard, looking about in his forties. He didn't say hello or ask questions, put a folder directly on the table and immediately began to scold him, Gambaryan remembers that he was saying: Binance is "destroying our economy" and providing funding for terrorism.

Then he told Gambaryan and Anjarwalla what would happen: they would be taken back to the hotel to pack and then transferred to another place where there would be more EFCC officials and some central bank personnel until Binance handed over all involved Transaction data for Nigerians who have used the platform.

Gambaryan felt his heart beating faster, and he immediately stated that he had no authority and could not provide such a large amount of data - the purpose of his trip was actually to report the bribery to Bello's agency.

Bello seemed a little surprised when he heard about bribery, as if it was the first time he heard about such a thing, but he quickly ignored it. The meeting is over. Gambaryan quickly sent a text to Binance’s chief compliance officer Noah Perlman telling him they might be detained. The officials then took their cell phones.

The two were taken outside to a black Rand cruiser with dark window masks on the windows. The SUV sent them back to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel and was taken back to their respective rooms – Anjarwalla followed Bello and another official, and Gambaryan was taken by Ogunjobi. They were told to pack their luggage. Gambaryan remembers saying to Ogunjobi, "You know how bad this is, do you?"

Ogunjobi barely dared to look him in the air and replied, "I know, I know."

The Rand cruiser then sent them to a large two-story house located in a walled courtyard with marble floors enough to accommodate two Binance employees and several EFCC officials’ bedrooms, and one Private chef. Gambaryan later learned that the house was the government-designated residence of the national security adviser Ribadu, but Ribadu chose to live in his own home and leave the place for official use - in this incident, as a temporary place to detain them.

That night, Bello made no other requests. Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were told to have a rest after having a Nigerian stew made by the chef in the house. Gambaryan lay in bed, anxious and almost panic because he had no cell phone, could not contact the outside world, and could not even tell his family where he was.

It was not until two o'clock in the morning that he finally fell asleep, and a few hours later, woke up in the early morning prayer. Because he was too anxious, he could no longer lie in the bed, so he walked to the yard of the house and smoked to think about his current predicament: he became a hostage and fell into the financial crime he had devoted his life to combating.

But in addition to this irony, what made him feel even more overwhelming was the complete unknown. "What the hell will I do? What will Yuki go through?" He thought of his wife, feeling anxious. "How long will we stay here?"

Gambaryan stood in the yard smoking until the sun rose.

Then there is the interrogation.

The breakfast was prepared by the chef, but Gambaryan had no appetite for food due to excessive stress. Bello sat down and talked to them and told them that to release them, Binance had to hand over all data about Nigerian users and banned Nigerian users from peer-to-peer transactions. Peer-to-peer trading is a feature on the Binance platform that allows traders to post ads for cryptocurrency sales based on exchange rates they partially control, which Nigerian officials believe has exacerbated the depreciation of the Naira to some extent.

In addition to these requirements, there is an unspecified requirement in the conference room: Binance needs to pay a huge sum. When Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were seized, Nigeria communicated with Binance seniors through secret channels, and the company learned that they were asking for billions of dollars. Government officials even publicly told the BBC that the fine would reach at least $10 billion, more than double the highest settlement Binance paid to the United States, according to people involved in the negotiations. (Binance did propose a “deposit” scheme based on the company’s tax liability estimates in Nigeria, but the proposals were never accepted. Meanwhile, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were second after their detention Day, the U.S. Embassy received a strange letter from the EFCC, which stated that Gambaryan was detained “for the purpose of constructive dialogues” and that he “voluntarily participates in these strategic dialogues.”

Gambaryan repeatedly explained to Bello that he had no actual power in Binance's business decisions to meet his requests. Bello did not change his tone after hearing this, and continued to make a long-term accusation of the damage caused to Nigeria and declared that Nigeria should be compensated. Gambaryan recalls that Bello sometimes showed off the gun he carried and showed photos of himself training with the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, seemingly showing his authority and connection to the United States.

Ogunjobi also participated in the interrogation. Gambaryan said he was quieter and more respectful than Bello, but no longer the respectful student. When Gambaryan mentioned that he had provided many help to Nigerian law enforcement, Ogunjobi responded that he saw comments on LinkedIn that Binance hired him just to create the illusion of legitimacy, and that was shocked Gambaryan, especially It was after their long conversation before.

Gambaryan, who was angry and unable to meet Nigerian requirements, asked to see a lawyer, contact the U.S. Embassy and return his cell phone, but all requests were denied, although he was allowed to call his wife in the presence of the guard.

In a stalemate with EFCC officials, Gambaryan told them he would not eat unless he was allowed to meet attorneys and contact the embassy. He started a hunger strike, trapped in the house, guarded by government personnel and guards, and sat on the sofa all day watching Nigerian TV. After five days of hunger strike, the officials finally gave in.

He and Anjarwalla were returned to their cell phones, but were told not to contact the media and their passport was detained. They were subsequently allowed to meet with local attorneys hired by Binance. After a week of detention, Gambaryan was taken to the Nigerian government building to meet with local diplomats. Diplomats said they would pay attention to Gambaryan's situation, but so far there is no way to let him be free.

Then they began to live a "Groundhog Day" daily life, just as Gambaryan later told his wife, wandering around. The house is spacious and clean, but dilapidated, with leaking roofs and no electricity for many days. Gambaryan became friends with the chef and some of the guardians, and watched the pirated episode of The Legend of the World: The Last Airbender. Anjarwalla began to do yoga every day, drinking the shakes made by the chef for him.

Anjarwalla looks harder to withstand their imprisonment anxiety than Gambaryan, and he feels frustrated by missing his son’s first birthday. Nigeria withdrew his British passport, but they did not realize that Anjarwalla also held his Kenyan passport. He joked with Gambaryan about running away, but Gambaryan said he never seriously considered it. He told himself that Yuki had told him to "don't do stupid things" and that he was not going to take risks.

One day, Anjarwalla lay on the sofa and told Gambaryan that she felt uncomfortable and was cold all over. Gambaryan covered him with a lot of blankets, but he was still shaking. Eventually, Nigeria took Anjarwalla and Gambaryan to the hospital and rode another black Land Cruiser to test Anjarwalla for malaria. The test result showed negative, and the doctor told Anjarwalla that he had just had a panic attack. Since then, every night, Gambaryan says Anjarwalla sleeps beside him because he is too afraid to sleep alone.

In the second week of Gambaryan and Anjarwalla's imprisonment, Binance agreed to the request, shut down its peer-to-peer trading function in Nigeria and revoked all Naira transactions. EFCC officials told Gambaryan and Anjarwalla that they were ready to pack their luggage and ready to release them. The two were very serious when they heard the good news, and Gambaryan even took videos of the house with his mobile phone as a memory of this strange life.

However, before they are about to be released, government guards took them to the EFCC office. The agency's chairman requested confirmation whether Binance had handed over all data about Nigerian users. When he learned that Binance had not provided, he immediately revoked his release decision and sent the two back to the hotel.

At this point, the first is the cryptocurrency website DLNews reported that two Binance executives were detained in Nigeria, although not named. A few days later, the Wall Street Journal and Wired also confirmed that Anjarwalla and Gambaryan were detained.

Bello was angry at the news leak, and Gambaryan recalls that Bello pushed the blame to him and Anjarwalla. Bello told them that if they hand over the data required by the government, they would be free. Gambaryan lost his patience and asked Bello: "Do you want me to take it out of my right pocket or my left pocket?" He recalled standing up, exaggeratingly pulling things out of one pocket and then out of another . "I have no way to provide this data."

Weeks have passed and negotiations are still not progressing. Ramadan begins, and Gambaryan wakes up and prays with Anjarwalla every morning and fasts with him during the day to show friendship and unity.

However, after nearly a month of dilemma, things suddenly changed. One morning, Gambaryan woke up and saw Anjarwalla had returned from the mosque. When he went to find his companion, he found that only the shirt stuffed into a pillow and the water bottle in the socks were left on the bed - Anjarwalla ran away.

Later, Gambaryan learned that Anjarwalla had managed to flee Nigeria on a flight. He speculated that Anjarwalla might have somehow skipped the wall of the yard and managed to avoid the guards—the guards often sleep in the morning—and then paid for a taxi to the airport, and finally boarded the plane with his second passport .

Gambaryan has realized that his situation in Nigeria is about to undergo drastic changes. He walked to the yard and recorded a selfie video, ready to send it to his wife Yuki and Binance’s colleagues, talking to the camera as he walked.

"I have been detained by the Nigerian government for a month and I don't know what will happen after today," he said calmly and controlled. "I did nothing wrong. I have been a policeman all my life. I only ask the Nigerian government to let me go, and I also ask the US government for help. I need your help, everyone. I don't know if I can get out without your help. . Please help me."

When Nigerian side learned that Anjarwalla had escaped, the guards and guards took Gambaryan's cell phone and began to search the house wildly. Soon, they disappeared and replaced with a new person.

Feeling a premonition that might happen next, Gambaryan manages to convince a Nigerian to lend him a cell phone quietly, then goes to the bathroom to call his wife and contacts Yuki late at night. Gambaryan said it was the first time in their 17-year relationship that he was scared. Yuki cried and she walked into the closet to talk to him to avoid waking the child. Then, Gambaryan suddenly hung up the phone-someone came.

A military official told Gambaryan to pack his luggage and said he would be released. Although he knew that this could not be true, he packed the things and walked to the car outside and saw Ogunjobi sitting in the car. When Gambaryan asks Ogunjobi where they are going, Ogunjobi vaguely replied, maybe he is going home, but not today – and then silently looks at his phone.

The car eventually drove into the EFCC campus instead of parking near the headquarters, but heading straight to the detention facility. Gambaryan angrily scolded the guards, no longer caring about offending them.

When he was taken to the EFCC detention building, he saw a group of people who once guarded him in a safe room, who are now in prison, who are under investigation, as they may allow Anjarwalla to escape, or even suspected of having sex with him There is collusion. Gambaryan was then locked into his own cell alone.

As Gambaryan described, that cell was like a "box" without windows, a cold shower with only a time switch and an out-of-time Posturepedic mattress. The room was filled with up to half a dozen cockroaches, of varying sizes. Despite the high temperatures in Abuja, there is no air conditioning or ventilation in the cell, only the "world's loudest fan" that Gambaryan remembers runs day and night. "I can still hear that damn fan sound now," he said.

Being locked in that cell alone, Gambaryan says he began to feel disconnected from his body, his environment and all this hellish situation. On the first night, he didn't even think about his family, his head was blank, and he didn't notice the cockroaches in the room.

By the next morning, Gambaryan had not eaten for more than 24 hours. Another detainee gave him some cookies. He soon realized that his survival was dependent on Ogunjobi, who would come to deliver food to him every few days, and sometimes let him use his cell phone, when he was briefly released from solitary confinement. Soon, Gambaryan's former guards began to share the meals sent by his family with him, and Ogunjobi came less and less often, and sometimes even refused to let him use his cell phone. The young man who had taken him at the airport, who was full of admiration for Gambaryan's work, seemed to have completely changed. "It's almost certain that he enjoys control over me," Gambaryan said.

A Nigerian who was his guard a few days ago, now he is Gambaryan's only friend. He taught a young EFCC staff to play chess, who often played chess together during their brief free time before being locked up in the cell.

A few days after being held in the detention center, Gambaryan's lawyer came to see him and told him that in addition to the original tax evasion charges, he is now accused of money laundering. The new charges mean he could face 20 years in prison.

In the second week of the detention center, Gambaryan's son turned 5. On her birthday, Gambaryan was allowed to use the EFCC phone to call her family and smoke a few cigarettes, and no other times were allowed. He spoke to his wife for 20 minutes - he said his wife was "crashed" from anxiety and then chatted with the children for a while. The son still doesn't understand why he is not at home. Yuki told Gambaryan that his son started crying for him inadvertently and often went to their offices to sit in his chair. Gambaryan explained to his daughter that he was still resolving legal issues with the Nigerian government. Later he learned that his daughter had checked his name and read the news two weeks after he was detained, and knew more than she had let him know.

In addition to occasionally meeting prisoners who are imprisoned, Gambaryan has two books to pass the time—one is Dan Brown novel given to him by EFCC staff, and the other is Percy Jackson teenager novel brought by lawyers. . He had few other things to keep himself busy. His thoughts cycled repeatedly between curses of anger, blame for himself, and a void.

"It's simply torture," Gambaryan said. "I know if I've been there, I'll definitely go crazy."

Although Gambaryan felt extremely lonely, he was not forgotten. While he was in the EFCC cell, a loose group of friends and supporters had already begun to respond to his call for help in the video. However, he soon realized that if he wanted freedom, the real help would not come from the Biden administration.

Within Binance, the first text message from Gambaryan about his detention immediately sparked an endless crisis response meeting, hiring lawyers and consultants, and contacting any government officials who may have an influential presence in Nigeria. Former U.S. attorney Will Frentzen from the Bay Area has handled many of Gambaryan's big cases, and after moving to private firm Morrison Foerster, he took over Gambaryan's case and became his private defense attorney. Gambaryan’s former colleague Patrick Hillman has worked with former Florida Congressman Connie Mack to deal with crisis responses and learn about Mack’s experience in handling hostage incidents. Mack agreed to lobby for Gambaryan's contacts in the legislative world. Gambaryan's old colleagues at the FBI also immediately began to put pressure on the FBI to promote Gambaryan's release.

However, at the top of the U.S. administration, some supporters of Gambaryan said their request for help was responded cautiously. “State Department staff have been working to ensure Gambaryan’s safety, health, and legal aid since the first day of his detention, and to promote his release after he is criminally prosecuted,” a senior State Department official accepted WIRED During the interview, he said that according to departmental policies, he requested anonymity. However, according to several people involved in the matter, the Biden administration initially seemed to have an ambiguous attitude towards Gambaryan. After all, Binance just agreed to pay a huge fine to the Justice Department, the government is not friendly to the entire cryptocurrency industry, and Binance has a poor reputation, "toxic" - as one Gambaryan supporter described it.

"They think maybe there are cases in Nigeria," Frentzen said. "They weren't sure what Tigran did there. So they all chose to back off."

Gambaryan happens to be in a very dangerous geopolitical moment in Nigeria. The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria retires in 2023, and the new ambassador will not officially take office until May 2024. Meanwhile, Niger and Chad have requested the U.S. to withdraw its troops in both countries as the two countries are strengthening relations with Russia, while Nigeria is a key U.S. military ally in the region. This makes negotiations to free Gambaryan more complicated than with other countries that mistakenly detain American citizens, such as Russia or Iran. "Nigeria is the only option left and they know that, too," Frentzen said. "So, the timing is really bad. Tigran is really one of the most unfortunate people in the world."

When Gambaryan was held in the guest room, it might be more clear on the diplomatic level that he was a hostage, former MP Mack said he had lobbyed for Gambaryan's release. However, the criminal charges filed against him complicated the situation. "The U.S. government has adapted to this narrative," Mack said. "They want the legal process to be unfolded."

Frentzen and his senior colleague at Morrison Foerster and former general counsel for the National Intelligence Agency, Robert Litt, said they began to contact the White House and explained to them how weak the criminal case Gambaryan faced. Of the more than 300 pages of "evidence" submitted by the Nigerian prosecutor, only two pages mentioned Gambaryan himself: one is an email showing his work at Binance; the other is a scan of his business card.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government has not interfered in Gambaryan's criminal prosecution in the following months. It was a shocking situation for Frentzen: A former IRS agent who worked in the federal government for many years, who had handled many major cryptocurrency criminal cases and asset confiscation cases in history, but it seems It is the cryptocurrency blackmail incident that has received support from the government that is merely silent.

"This guy helped the United States recover billions," Frentzen recalled, "and we can't save him from the plight of Nigeria?"

In early April, Gambaryan was taken to court for arraignment. He was shown publicly in a black T-shirt and dark green pants, as a symbol of the evil forces that destroyed Nigeria's economy. As he sat on a red sofa chair and listened to the charges, media from local and international flocked to him, cameras sometimes just a few feet from his face, he could hardly hide his anger and humiliation. "I feel like a circus animal," he said.

In this trial, the next trial and subsequent court documents, the prosecutor argued that if Gambaryan was given bail, he would likely run away, taking Anjarwalla's escape as an example. They strangely stressed that Gambaryan was born in Armenia, even though he left the country with his family at the age of 9. What’s even more ridiculous is that they claim that Gambaryan and other prisoners in the EFCC detention center have planned a plot to run away with a substitute, and Gambaryan says it’s a totally ridiculous lie.

At one point, the prosecutor made it clear that the detention of Gambaryan was crucial to the Nigerian government and was a leverage for their pressure on Binance. "The first defendant, Binance, is operated virtually," the prosecutor told the judge. "The only thing we can catch is this defendant."

The judge refused to rule on Gambaryan's bail and decided to continue to detain him. After two weeks of solitary confinement, he was transferred to the real prison, Kuj Prison.

The guards – including the usual Ogunjobi – took Gambaryan into a van. Ogunjobi returned the cigarettes to him, who had been smoking almost the same for an hour's drive from the centre of Abuja, and on the way they passed through a place that looked like a slum in the suburbs of the city. During this journey, Gambaryan was allowed to call Yuki and some of Binance executives, some of whom hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

This journey to Kuj Prison, which was known for its extremely poor conditions and the prison that once held Boko Haram suspects, Gambaryan said he felt numb, "isolated from the outside world" and gave up control of his fate completely. . "I'll live for an hour or a minute," he said.

When they arrived and walked through the prison gate, Gambaryan saw the low-rise buildings of the prison, painted light yellow on the walls, many of which were still destroyed by ISIS attacks, which almost two years ago left over 800 more A prisoner escaped. Gambaryan's EFCC guards took him to the jail and to the warden's office. He later learned that the warden was closely monitoring him according to the instructions of National Security Adviser Ribadu.

Gambaryan was then taken to the “quarantine zone”, a unit specially set up for high-risk inmates and VIP prisoners who are willing to pay extra fees for special treatment. The 6×10-foot room has a toilet, a metal bed frame with what Gambaryan calls a "simple blanket" as a mattress, and a window with metal railings. Compared to the EFCC dungeon, this room is an "upgraded version": he has sunshine and fresh air - although contaminated by garbage fires hundreds of meters away - and can still see trees, which are on them every night. Bats will fly in groups.

Gambaryan's first night in prison, it started raining and a cool breeze blew in the windows. "Although the environment is poor," Gambaryan said, "but I feel like I'm in heaven."

Soon after, Gambaryan met his neighbor. One of them is the cousin of the vice president of Nigeria, and the other is a suspect suspected of fraud and waiting for extradition in the United States, with the amount involved in the case of up to US$100 million; the third is Abba Kyari, former deputy police chief of Nigeria, who was arrested by the United States for suspected bribery. prosecution, although Nigeria rejected the U.S. extradition request. Gambaryan believes Kyari's case is more because he offended some corrupt Nigerian officials.

Gambaryan said Kyari had a great influence in the prison and that other prisoners basically worked for him. Kyari’s wife will bring home-cooked meals to everyone, even the guards are no exception. Gambaryan especially likes some kind of dumpling from northern Nigeria that Kyari’s wife makes, and she will make extra for him. He would share with Kyari the takeaway brought by his lawyer from the fast food restaurant Kilimanjaro, who particularly liked their Scottish eggs.

Gambaryan’s neighbors taught him the unspoken rules of prison life: how to get a cell phone, how to avoid conflict with prison staff, and how to avoid violence from other prisoners. Gambaryan insists he never bribed the guards – although they sometimes ask for tens of thousands of dollars astronomical figures – but he is still protected due to his close relationship with Kyari. "He's like my Red," Gambaryan said, likening Kyari to the role played by Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption. "He is the key to my survival."

Gambaryan's case continued over the next few weeks, and he was regularly sent back to Abuja for hearings, where the judge always seemed to be biased towards prosecutors. On May 17 – his 40th birthday – he attended the hearing again, and his bail request was eventually denied. That night, the lawyers brought the big cake paid by Binance and sent it to Kujie Prison, where he shared the cake with his neighbors and guards.

Every night, Gambaryan was locked into the cell early, usually starting at 7 p.m., and even several hours before the other prisoners, and he was always stared by a guard who would record every move of his movement on his notebook, All this is done according to the orders of the National Security Advisor. He found himself exercising by doing pull-ups on the windowsill at the entrance of the quarantine courtyard. Although there were huge cockroaches, geckos, and even scorpions in the cell - he learned to shake out the small beige scorpions that he had before wearing shoes every time - he slowly adapted to prison life.

Sometimes, he would wake up from his dream, dream of being still outside, suddenly realize that he was in this small and dirty cell, and then he would get up from the bed and pace anxiously in the small space. The guard didn't let him out until about 6 a.m. However, eventually Gambaryan said his dreams also became full of images of prison.

One afternoon in May, Gambaryan began to feel uncomfortable while meeting with his lawyer. He returned to his cell and lay down, he vomited the rest of the night. He guessed that he might be food poisoning, but the guards had blood tests and it turned out that he had malaria. The guard asked him to pay cash, used the money to buy a little drop of liquid, hung it on nails on the wall of the cell, and gave him anti-malarial needles.

The next morning, Gambaryan had a court hearing, and he told the guards that he was too weak to even walk, but they pulled out the drip and forced him into the car, saying it was an official order. He barely climbed the long steps when he arrived at the court, but as soon as he entered the court, his vision began to blur and the room began to spin. Next, he fell to his knees. The guards helped him stand up, he collapsed in a chair, and lawyers asked the court to order him to take him to the hospital.

The judge issued an inpatient order, but Gambaryan was not taken directly to a medical facility, but was sent back to Kujie Prison, where the court, his attorney, the prison, the office of the National Security Adviser and the U.S. State Department are discussing whether to release him temporarily, Because they feared he had a risk of escape. For the next 10 days, Gambaryan was lying in the cell, unable to eat or stand up. Eventually, he was taken to Nizamiya Hospital in Abuja for a chest x-ray, and after a simple examination, he was prescribed antibiotics. The doctor said he was fine, but then he was sent back to Kuj Prison without any explanation.

In fact, Gambaryan's condition is more severe than before. His friend, Turkish Canadian Chagri Poyraz, eventually had to fly to Ankara and check the Turkish government for Gambaryan's hospital records before learning that his X-rays showed he had multiple severe bacterial lung infections. A few months later, the judge in the case also asked Abraham Ehizojie, the medical director of Kujie Prison, to appear in court, explaining why the hospitalization order was not followed. Prosecutors took out Gambaryan's medical records, saying he refused treatment and asked to be sent back to jail, but Gambaryan strongly denied it.

After returning to the cell at Kuj Prison, Gambaryan's fever did not subside for several consecutive days, and his body temperature reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit. During his brief hospitalization, the guards searched his cell and found his cell phone, so he was completely isolated and unable to contact the outside world until his neighbors helped him get a new cell phone. His body became weaker and weaker, his breathing became difficult, and his body temperature did not decline. Gambaryan gradually felt that he might not be able to survive. For a while, he called Will Frentzen and told him that he might be critically ill. However, officials at Kuj Prison still refused to send him back to the hospital.

Despite this, Gambaryan was not dead. But he lay in bed for nearly a month until he was finally able to stand up and eat again. He weighed nearly 30 pounds less than he was when he was in prison.

One day, when he recovered in his cell, the guard told him that there were guests visiting him. Although he still felt weak, he slowly walked to the office in front of the prison. After entering the door, he saw two members of the U.S. Congress, French Hill and Chrissy Houlahan, from two parties. Gambaryan could hardly believe they were true—the first Americans he had met in months, except for the low-level U.S. State Department officials who occasionally visited him.

For the next 25 minutes, they listened to Gambaryan’s description of the harsh conditions in the prison and his life and death line between malaria and later pneumonia. Hill recalls Gambaryan's voice was so light that the two MPs had to go forward to hear what he was saying, especially under the noise of the fan.

Sometimes Gambaryan's eyes were filled with tears, as the pain of loneliness and the fear of dying finally made him unable to help himself. "He looks like a sick, weak, emotionally broken person and really needs a hug," Hill said. The two MPs gave him a hug each and said they would work for his release.

He was then taken back to the cell.

The next day, on June 20, Hill and Horahan recorded a video on the apron at Abuja Airport. "We have asked our embassy to promote the humanitarian release of Tigran, given the harsh conditions in the prison, his innocence and his health," Hill said to the camera. "We hope he can go home, and let Binance and Nigerians deal with the rest themselves."

Connie Mack’s conversation with his old friends worked: At a subcommittee hearing on the detention of U.S. citizens by foreign governments, Gambaryan’s Georgia Representative Rich McCormick proposed that Gambaryan’s case should be considered as being held by a foreign government Hostage case. He cites the Levinson Act, which requires the U.S. government to assist citizens who have been wrongly detained. "Is diplomatic intervention necessary in the United States to ensure the release of detainees? Absolutely yes, absolutely yes," McCormick said at the hearing. "This person deserves better treatment."

Meanwhile, 16 Republican lawmakers signed a letter asking the White House to treat Gambaryan's case as a hostage case. A few weeks later, McCormick brought the request out as a parliamentary resolution. More than a hundred former federal agents and prosecutors have also signed another letter asking the State Department to strengthen its efforts to help resolve the issue.

According to multiple sources, FBI Director Christopher Wray mentioned Gambaryan’s case during a June meeting with President Tinubu. After that, the Nigerian tax authority FIRS dropped the tax evasion charge against Gambaryan. However, the more serious money laundering charges filed by the EFCC remain and still threaten his decades-long jail.

For months, Gambaryan supporters have hoped that Nigeria will eventually reach a deal with Binance to end the prosecution against him. However, Binance representatives said that by then they seemed unable to propose conditions that interest Nigeria, who no longer even hints that any payment would be accepted. Whenever they feel like they are about to reach an agreement, the requirements change, the relevant officials disappear, and the agreement breaks down. "Like Lucy and football's story," said Deborah Curtis, an attorney for the law firm Arnold & Porter and former CIA deputy general counsel, who was providing legal services to Binance.

As the summer passed, Gambaryan supporters began to believe that negotiations between Nigeria and Binance had reached a dead end, and the criminal case was progressing far enough that Binance alone would not allow Gambaryan to be free. "It's starting to become clear," Frentzen said. "This can only be resolved through the U.S. government -- otherwise there will be no hope."

Meanwhile, Gambaryan's health worsened again. Lying on a metal bed frame for a long time aggravated the old back injury he suffered during IRS-CI training more than a decade ago. He was later diagnosed with a herniated disc - a ruptured outer layer of soft tissue between the spine, resulting in soft pads on the inner layer Highlight, compressing the nerves and causing severe persistent pain.

By August, Gambaryan told me via text that he was "almost paralyzed". He hasn't gotten out of bed for weeks and is still taking blood thinners to prevent blood clots in his legs due to lack of exercise. He wrote that every night he would be unable to fall asleep due to the pain, and would not fall asleep until five or six in the morning, or even unable to read books. Occasionally, he would call his family, chat with his daughter, and listen to her play a Japanese role-playing game called Omori, the computer he installed for her until she slept in Atlanta. Then, after a few hours, he fell asleep.

Despite the visits of members of Congress and the increasing calls for his release, Gambaryan seemed almost in desperate situations, at his lowest point in prison.

"I tried to pretend to be strong in front of Yuki and the kids, but it was really bad," he wrote to me. "I'm really in a dark place now."

A few days later, a video appeared on X platform where Gambaryan limped into the courtroom with a cane, dragging one foot. In the video, he asks for help from a guard in the corridor, but the guard even refuses his request. Gambaryan later told me that the court staff had been instructed not to allow any help or to use a wheelchair, fearing that this would arouse public sympathy.

"This is so fucking bad! Why can't I use a wheelchair?" Gambaryan yelled angrily in the video. "I'm an innocent person!"

"I'm a fucking human!" Gambaryan continued, his voice almost choked. He took a few steps with his crutch with difficulty, shook his head and said he couldn't believe it, then leaned against the wall to rest. "I can't do it at all."

If the order at that time was to prevent Gambaryan from raising sympathy when entering the court, this would be completely counterproductive. The video spread rapidly online and was viewed millions of times.

By the fall of 2024, it seemed that the U.S. government finally reached a consensus that it was time to get Gambaryan home. In September, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bipartisan resolution that approved McCormick’s proposal to prioritize Gambaryan’s case. "I urge the State Department, I urge President Biden to put more pressure on the Nigerian government," said Hill at the hearing. "It must be recognized that a U.S. citizen was kidnapped and held by a friendly country and had nothing to do with him."

Some Gambaryan supporters revealed that they heard that the new ambassador to Nigeria also began to frequently mention Gambaryan to Nigerian officials and even President Tinubu, so that at least one minister blocked the ambassador on WhatsApp.

During the United Nations General Assembly in late September, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations mentioned Gambaryan’s case during his meeting with the Nigerian Foreign Minister and stressed the need for immediate release, the minutes read. Meanwhile, Binance hired a truck with digital billboards to drive around the United Nations and Midtown Manhattan, showing Gambaryan's face and calling on Nigeria to stop illegally imprisoning him.

Meanwhile, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with Nigeria's national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu, basically demanding the release of Gambaryan, said several sources involved in promoting Gambaryan's release. One of the most influential news is that several supporters say U.S. officials have made it clear that Gambaryan’s case will serve as a barrier to talks between President Biden and Nigerian President Tinubu at the UN General Assembly or other occasions. Haunted the Nigerian side.

Despite all this pressure, the decision to release Gambaryan is still in the hands of the Nigerian government. "For a while, Nigeria realized it was a very bad decision," said a Gambaryan supporter who asked not to be named, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations. "Then the question becomes whether they surrender, or because they can't look back."

One day in October, on a long drive from Kuje to Abuja court – by then, Gambaryan had already been unable to count how many trials he had experienced – the driver received a call. He talked for a while, then turned the front of the car and returned to prison with Gambaryan. After arriving at the prison, he was taken to the front desk and told him that he could not go to court because of his physical discomfort. That is a statement, not an inquiry.

Once back to the cell, Gambaryan called Will Frentzen, who Frentzen told him that it might mean they were finally ready to send him home. After many hopes that have been shattered over the past eight months, Gambaryan did not easily believe the news.

A few days later, the court held a trial, but Gambaryan was not present, and prosecutors told the judge that they decided to drop all charges against him because of Gambaryan's health. Officials at Kuja Prison spent a whole day processing the documents, took him out of the cell, brought him the suitcase he brought when he went to Abuja and sent him to the Abuja Continental Hotel . Binance booked a room for him and arranged a private security guard, and invited a doctor to check him in to make sure he was healthy enough to fly. It all came too suddenly for Gambaryan, and after so many months of hopeless waiting, it was almost unbelievable.

The next day, on the runway at the Abuja airport, Nigerian officials returned his passport to him - although they first had a dispute over his fine of $2,000 for expiration of his visa. State Department staff helped him stand up from his wheelchair and board a private jet equipped with medical equipment. Gambaryan didn't know that Binance staff had been preparing for the flight for several weeks - Nigerian officials once told them that Gambaryan would be released but remorseed - they even arranged for him a route over Niger, Niger officials signed the consent form less than an hour before takeoff.

On the plane, Gambaryan ate a few bites of salad, fell asleep on the sofa, and woke up to Rome.

Binance arranged for the driver and private security to pick him up at the Italian airport and took him to the airport hotel for the night before flying back to Atlanta the next day. In the hotel, he called Yuki and then called Ogunjobi - his former friend in Nigeria and the one who advised him to return to Abuja a few months ago.

Gambaryan said he wanted to hear how Ogunjobi explains himself. When he called, Ogunjobi started crying on the phone, apologizing repeatedly and thanking God, Gambaryan was finally released.

All this was unbearable for Gambaryan, and he listened quietly, but did not accept the other party's apology. Just as Ogunjobi confided, he noticed a call from an American friend who was a Secret Service agent he had worked with. Gambaryan didn't know at the time that the agent happened to be at a meeting in Rome, with his former boss, Jarod Koopman, head of the IRS-CI cybercrime division, who was planning to bring him beer and pizza.

Gambaryan tells Ogunjobi that he has to hang up and end the call.

On a cold and windy December day, former federal agents, prosecutors, State Department officials and congressional aides gathered in a luxurious room in the Rayburn House office building to talk. Members of Congress walked in one by one and shook hands with Tigran Gambaryan, who was dressed in dark blue suits and tie, with a manicured beard and shaved hair. Although he was slightly limped by an emergency spinal surgery he had done in Georgia a month ago, his pace remains firm.

Gambaryan took photos with every legislator, aide, State Department official and spoke with them to thank them for their efforts to come home. When French MP Hill said it was delighted to see him again, Gambaryan quipped that he hoped that this meeting would have a better smell than when he was at Kuj.

This reception is just one of a series of VIP welcomes Gambaryan received after returning home. At the Georgia airport, Congressman McCormick came to greet him and gave him an American flag that was flying over the Capitol the day before. The White House also issued a statement saying President Biden has called the President of Nigeria, thanking President Tinubu for contributing to Gambaryan's release on humanitarian reasons.

I later learned that this statement of thanks was part of the agreement reached by the U.S. government and Nigeria, which also included assisting Nigeria in its investigation into Binance – an investigation that is still underway today. Nigeria continues to sue Binance and Anjarwalla in absentia. A Binance spokesman said in a statement that the company was “comfortable and grateful” and that Gambaryan had returned home smoothly and thanked everyone who had worked hard to release it. "We are eager to put this incident in the past and continue to work for a bright future for the blockchain industry in Nigeria and the globally," the statement reads. "We will continue to defend ourselves against those groundless allegations." Nigerian government officials did not respond to WIRED's request for multiple interviews with the Gambaryan case.

After the reception, Gambaryan took a taxi with me and I asked him what he planned to do next. He said that if the new administration is willing to accept him, he may return to government work—and of course, it depends on whether Yuki is willing to accept life back in Washington again. Cryptocurrency news website Coindesk reported last month that he has been recommended to serve as a senior position in the SEC's crypto assets head or FBI's networking division by some crypto industry insiders who have links to President Trump. Before thinking about this, he said vaguely, "I may need some time to sort out my thoughts."

I asked him what changed Nigeria's experience. He replied in a strange and relaxed tone: "I guess it really makes me even more angry, right?" He seemed to be thinking about this for the first time. "It makes me want to take revenge on those who did this to me."

For Gambaryan, revenge may be more than just fantasy. He is filing a human rights lawsuit against the Nigerian government, a case that began when he was detained and he hopes to investigate Nigerian officials who he believed had been imprisoned as hostage for more than half a year. Sometimes he even sends messages to officials he thinks is responsible for the incident, telling them, "You will see me again." He says that what they did "shamed the badge" and that he can forgive them for themselves Do what they do, but can't forgive what they do to their families.

"Am I stupid? Maybe," he told me in the taxi. "I had a severe pain in my back at that time and I was lying on the floor. It was so boring."

As we walked out of the car and came to his hotel in Arlington, Gambaryan lit a cigarette and I told him that although he said he was more angry than before he