A New York man, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, has admitted to the 2016 Bitfinex hack whereas coming into his responsible plea to expenses of cash laundering related to the hack. His confession on Thursday has make clear a $4.5 billion cyber heist that remained nameless till now.
Lichtenstein’s plea listening to happened in Washington, D.C., federal court docket, along with his spouse, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, awaiting her personal plea listening to within the viewers at press time. The couple was suspected of being concerned in laundering the stolen funds, however till now, their direct involvement within the unique hack was not recognized.
Six years on the run
Arrested in February 2022, Lichtenstein and Morgan had been initially tied to greater than 94,000 Bitcoin (BTC)of the over 119,000 Bitcoin stolen from the cryptocurrency alternate Bitfinex. These funds had been valued at about $3.6 billion on the time of seizure, marking the most important seizure in Division of Justice (DOJ) historical past. The entire worth of the stolen Bitcoin, initially value $70 million, skyrocketed to $4.5 billion as a result of risky cryptocurrency market.
The couple, nonetheless, was not charged instantly in connection to the hack. As an alternative, they had been implicated in an intricate cash laundering course of, by which roughly 25,000 of the stolen Bitcoin had been shifted out of Lichtenstein’s pockets into monetary accounts managed by the couple.
Lichtenstein, a Russian emigre, has been in custody with out bond since his arrest, deemed a flight threat by the court docket. His responsible plea to a cost of conspiracy to commit cash laundering comes with the settlement to cooperate with federal investigators.
In the meantime, Morgan, who has adopted the rapper monikers “Razzlekahn” and “The Crocodile of Wall Road,” had been free on a $3 million bond since her arrest. Of their first encounter in over a yr, Lichtenstein smiled and blew a kiss at his spouse throughout the court docket listening to.
Particulars emerged concerning the couple’s advanced monetary dealings throughout his plea listening to. This included changing property to gold cash, buried at a location now recognized to legislation enforcement, and a world community of middlemen used to transform digital property to money.
Additional investigations revealed that Lichtenstein, in collaboration with Morgan, had been conducting a sequence of small, advanced transactions throughout a number of accounts and platforms since 2017 to obscure the trail of the stolen funds. The couple additionally allegedly used their firm, Endpass, to launder the stolen funds, misrepresenting the character of funds into the corporate’s account.
The unraveling of this unprecedented cybercrime has sparked appreciable curiosity, with Netflix commissioning a sequence concerning the couple.
