Crypto Exchange Binance Hires Former IRS Agents to Strengthen Compliance
Job Appointments | October 1, 2021 br> By: David Pimentel
Crypto exchange Binance has announced the appointment of Tigran Gambaryan and Matthew Price, both former Special Agents of the Internal Revenue Service—Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Cyber Crimes Unit in Washington, D.C.
Binance appointed the two former cyber crime investigators to protect the platform and strengthen compliance. Both will join Binance’s research team with Gambaryan as the Vice President of Global Information and Research in Binance, and Price will be the Senior Director of Research.
Gambaryan joins Binance after a decade at the IRS-CI. As a Special Agent, Tigran investigated cases involving national security, terrorism financing, identity theft, distribution of child pornography, tax evasion, and bank secrecy act violations during his award-winning career. Gambaryan led several multi-billion dollar cyber investigations, including the Silk Road corruption investigations, BTC-e bitcoin exchange, and the Mt. Gox hack.
“The constantly evolving crypto industry requires strong cooperation between the industry, law enforcement, and regulators,” Gambaryan said in a statement. “Our goal is to increase trust in cryptocurrency by establishing Binance as the leading contributor in the fight against human trafficking, ransomware and terrorism financing.”
Price has 15 years of experience in law enforcement and intelligence, having led cyber, money laundering, and financial crimes investigations and efforts to mitigate counterterrorism and counterintelligence threats. Formerly serving as a Special Agent with IRS-CI, Price led international cyber investigations targeting bad actors who sought to exploit cryptocurrency for illicit purposes. Price was the lead investigator of Helix—the first investigation and successful prosecution of an illicit bitcoin tumbling service operating on the darknet.
“As a criminal investigator, I quickly learned that the key to success in crypto investigations is working closely with those within both the private and public sectors,” said Price. “I plan to leverage the skills I developed as an investigator to stay one step ahead of emerging threats in the crypto space.”
