U.S. authorities arrested a New York City couple Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to launder $4.5 billion worth of bitcoin stolen during a hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016, $3.6 billion of which federal authorities have recovered in what the Department of Justice is calling the largest financial seizure ever. (which appears to be true)
According to court filings, 34-year-old Ilya Lichtenstein (Russian Jew Im guessing) and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, conspired to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoins—currently worth about $5 billion—that were stolen from the Bitfinex platform after a breach of the cryptocurrency exchange's systems in 2016.
At the time, the unnamed hacker allegedly made more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions transferring the stolen cryptocurrency to a digital wallet under Lichntenstein's control, authorities said Tuesday.
They allege Lichentenstein and Morgan then employed "numerous sophisticated laundering techniques"—including using fake identities to set up online accounts and running computer programs to automate transactions—to transfer about 25,000 stolen coins out of the wallet and into financial accounts jointly controlled by the couple over the next five years. (25k at current prices is $1,105,425,000) that seems to mean they only managed to wash about 1/4 of what they had in possession if the Govt got another $3.6B as they seized roughly 96k more BTC.
The pair have been charged with Money Laundering (potentially 20yrs) and attempt to defraud the Govt which is potentially 5yrs.. I wonder if this is a squeeze play at work to get whoever really was behind the theft (good luck my guess it was black hats in Russia). But question is will Uncle Sam keep the Btc or return it to the rightful owners at Bitfinex (my guess is itll never see its way out until the govt decides to flash crash BTC on a whim and dumps them on the market).
small note at the end of the article I found says this and it could be either a nothing burger or it could be a whole lot of problems for Crypto in the USA really quick
"President Joe Biden is reportedly slated to release an executive order that will task federal agencies with regulating cryptocurrencies as a matter of national security as soon as this month."
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Originally Posted by sonatine
