A Manhattan couple has been charged with laundering $4.5 billion in stolen bitcoin. At their residence, agents discovered hollowed-out books, encrypted devices, and $40,000 in cash.
A hacker stole 119,754 bitcoins from Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange, in August of 2016. Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, a young married couple from Manhattan, appeared in federal court on Tuesday, charged with attempting to launder the proceeds of that crime.
The stolen bitcoin was worth around seventy-one million dollars when the exchange was hacked. It is now worth more than five billion dollars. On paper, at least, Lichtenstein and Morgan were wealthier than Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, just before their arrest.
A pair from New York has been charged with participating in a $4.5 billion scheme to launder stolen bitcoins. The US Department of Justice accused Heather Morgan, 31, and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, on Tuesday, charging that they were involved in a complex, years-long plot to launder the proceeds of the 2016 breach of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
Lichtenstein is a 34-year-old dual Russian-American citizen who self-describes as a “tech entrepreneur, explorer, and occasional magician” on Medium. “Dutch” is his nickname. His Twitter page (@unrealdutch) is a snarky take on bitcoin, Web 3.0, and non-fungible tokens.
Morgan and Lichtenstein were arrested last week on charges of money laundering and defrauding the US government. The case’s ensuing media attention has naturally centered on their colorful internet personae.
The duo is a software entrepreneur with many firms under their belts, but it’s their social media activity that has gotten the most attention. Morgan also dabbled in rapping, specializing in weird and unusual rhymes about money and her way of life.
Morgan and Lichtenstein have been taken into prison in Washington, DC, and will appear in court on Monday to have their bail requests reviewed and to determine whether they are a flight risk.
Morgan and Lichtenstein are also accused of transferring funds to AlphaBay, a dark-web exchange that was shut down by authorities in 2017. On the black Web, you can buy almost anything you want with digital currency, and no one cares where your money came from.
However, it appears that the sums Morgan and Lichtenstein were attempting to launder were too large to be cashed out by purchasing goods. The stolen coins were simply channeled through AlphaBay.
Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange with a British Virgin Islands registration. Hackers broke into the company’s security systems in August 2016, stealing around 120,000 bitcoin from clients. At the time, Bitcoin was worth around $600, therefore the stolen bitcoin was worth nearly $70 million.
Also read: Coinbase app has risen to second place in the Apple App Store
