Binance boosts its security efforts, appoints former IRS Special Agents

By Leandra Monteiro

Binance, a blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, 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.

Tigran joins Binance as VP of Global Intelligence and Investigations 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. Tigran led several multi-billion dollar cyber investigations, including the Silk Road corruption investigations, BTC-e bitcoin exchange, and the Mt. Gox hack.

Matthew joins Binance as Senior Director of Investigations with 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, Matthew led international cyber investigations targeting bad actors who sought to exploit cryptocurrency for illicit purposes. Matthew was the lead investigator of Helix—the first investigation and successful prosecution of an illicit bitcoin tumbling service operating on the darknet.

This announcement follows the recent appointments of former Europol specialist covering Dark Web investigations, Nils Andersen-Röed and former crime detective of Mariposa County in California, Aron Akbiyikian, who also led investigations at Chainalysis and TRM Labs before joining Binance.

“The Binance investigations team now includes the top investigators in the world who have worked on some of the most significant cyber investigations in history with unmatched track records in this space,” said Binance CEO ‘CZ’ (Changpeng Zhao). “This level of experience will make Binance a leader in compliance, enhancing trust in Binance and the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.”

Led by Binance’s Chief Security Officer Jimmy Su and Tigran, the audit and investigations team will focus on internal and external investigations to prevent threats and financial losses while continuing to work closely with law enforcement agencies and regulators around the world.

“Compliance is the first line of defense,” said Tigran. “We will work closely with our colleagues in compliance to identify criminals and refer them for prosecution. The constantly evolving crypto industry requires strong cooperation between the industry, law enforcement and regulators. 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.”

“I want to educate the worldwide law enforcement community on how Binance is a partner in the fight against the illicit use of cryptocurrency, keeping the ecosystem more secure and moving it forward sustainably,” added Tigran.