US Federal officials seized $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex. US Agents arrested two individuals in New York on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, on charges they conspired to launder proceeds from the hack. According to a U.S. Department of Justice, the married couple, Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and Heather Morgan, 31, will appear in court at 3:00 p.m. ET in Manhattan, New York.
Some 120,000 BTC was stolen in the 2016 hack, then worth around $60 million and representing nearly one-sixth of the total trading volume at the time. At today’s prices, the total amount of bitcoin stolen is valued at $4.5 billion, but the US Officials only seized about 94,000 BTC valued at $3.6 billion. A search warrants was execution of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan. Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex.
The defendants allegedly used several techniques to launder the stolen bitcoin, including splitting transactions up into “thousands” of smaller transactions, using darknet markets and converting into other types of crypto such as monero.
The couple are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said “Today, federal law enforcement demonstrates once again that we can follow money through the blockchain, and that we will not allow cryptocurrency to be a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness within our financial system. The arrests today show that we will take a firm stand against those who allegedly try to use virtual currencies for criminal purposes.”
The investigation was led by IRS-CI Washington, D.C. Field Office’s Cyber Crimes Unit, the FBI’s Chicago Field Office, and HSI-New York. The Ansbach Police Department in Germany helped during this investigation.
For more information, please visit us @GoSpeedHub on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
