Short answers, pulled from the story.
Virgil Griffith is an American computer programmer born in 1983 who created WikiScanner, a tool that traced anonymous edits on a widely edited reference site, co-designed the Tor2web proxy, and worked as a research scientist at the Ethereum Foundation. He pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiring to help North Korea evade U.S. sanctions using cryptocurrency.
WikiScanner is a tool Virgil Griffith released on the 14th of August 2007 that traced anonymous edits on a widely edited reference site back to their originating IP addresses and named the corporations behind them. Griffith said his goal was to 'create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.'
Virgil Griffith was arrested by the FBI on the 28th of November 2019 for providing North Korea with technical information that authorities said could help the country launder money and evade sanctions. The charges followed his attendance at a blockchain conference in Pyongyang in 2018.
Virgil Griffith was sentenced on the 12th of April 2022 to 63 months in prison, with 10 months already counted as time served. He had pleaded guilty on the 28th of September 2021 and expressed remorse at the hearing.
Virgil Griffith attended the conference in Pyongyang in mid-2018 alongside seven other foreign delegates, after which North Korean security staff confiscated the group's passports over a pornographic video found on one laptop. The conference itself was held at Pyongyang's Sci-Tech Complex, which the delegates found stocked with outdated technology.
Virgil Griffith was released from prison on the 9th of April 2025. He had served time at FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania before later moving to FCI Milan in Michigan.