A married couple from New York pleaded guilty this week to laundering billions of dollars in connection with the hack of the cryptocurrency stock exchange Bitfinex that took place in 2016.
The hackers stole 120,000 Bitcoin and the theft had serious consequences on the Bitcoin value that significantly dropped after the discovery of the breach, a 20 percent decrease following the hack.
In February 2022, Ilya Lichtenstein (35) and his wife, Heather Morgan (32), were arrested for alleged conspiracy to launder $4.5 Billion in stolen cryptocurrency stolen during the 2016 hack of Bitfinex. Law enforcement also seized over $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency (around 95,000 of the stolen crypto assets) linked to that hack.
Since then, the government has seized another approximately $475 million linked to the cyber heist.
Lichtenstein used numerous sophisticated hacking tools and techniques to breach Bitfinex’s network and once gained access to its infrastructure fraudulently authorized more than 2,000 transactions in which 119,754 bitcoins was transferred from Bitfinex to a cryptocurrency wallet in his control.
He also managed to cover his tracks by deleting access credentials and other log files. Lichtenstein’s wife, Morgan, helped him in laundering the stolen funds.
The couples used fake identities to set up online accounts, programs to automate transactions, deposited the stolen funds into accounts at a variety of darknet markets and cryptocurrency exchanges, exchanged a portion of the stolen funds into gold coins and other crypto assets, and used cryptocurrency mixing services like ChipMixer, Bitcoin Fog and Helix.
Lichtenstein faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, with his wife. Morgan pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and she faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Image Credits : Cryptopolitan
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