The hacker behind one of the largest cryptocurrency raid in history will spend five years in an American prison.
The American resident Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, was sentenced in prison at 14 to five years after hacking Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, in 2016. Lichtenstein Stal 120,000 Bitcoins and began to laundry money with his wife, Heather Rhianon Morgan.
The robbery was worth $ 70 million at the time of the hack, but had risen to more than $ 4.5 billion by the time they were arrested in February 2022. It would be worth $ 10.7 billion at today’s current rate.
Successful crypto-laundering schedule
Lichtenstein is an entrepreneur and cryptocurrency investor born in Russia who grew up in Chicago.
Morgan is an American businesswoman and artist who performs rap numbers under the pseudonym “Razzlekhan.”
Around 2016 the couple lived in San Francisco.
After Lichtenstein Bitfinex, a crypto exchange established in Hong Kong, he asked Morgan to help money laundering “without explaining exactly what he did,” said prosecutors. The couple were successfully washed around 21% of the stolen funds, which was around $ 14 million at the rates of 2016. He told her about the theft in 2019.
This led prosecutors to claim that Morgan was “certainly a willing participant and bears full responsibility for her actions, but she was a participant at a lower level.”
Lichtenstein also received the help of couriers he met while traveling to Kazakhstan and Ukraine, to smuggle the white -washed money back to the US.
“More than half a decade, the suspect was concerned with what agents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) described as the most complicated whiteface techniques they had seen so far,” wrote officers of justice.
The couple was arrested in 2022, when they lived in New York. Lichtenstein has been in prison since then.
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96% of the stolen bitcoins recovered
After his arrest, Lichtenstein immediately started working together with law enforcement and helped them with other cyber crime studies.
He and Morgan argue guilty of one counting of money laundering in August 2023.
Prosecutors have recommended five years in prison for Lichtenstein and 18 months for Morgan.
Lichtenstein also helped to restore more than 96% of the stolen funds, said defender Samson Enzer. Most was never spent.
During the hearing, the American district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Lichtenstein said that his theft was “carefully planned” and that it was “important to send a message that you cannot commit these crimes with impunity, that there are consequences for them.”
Lichtenstein said he is taking full responsibility for his actions, but asked that his wife was not sentenced to a prison.
The hearing of Morgan is planned for November 18.
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