They're weird, rich, and potentially headed to prison. Here's your explainer on the awkward tech couple that the feds say laundered billions in crypto.
At the time of the hack, the theft of 119,754 BTC from the platform’s coffers was valued at some $71 million. Today, due to Bitcoin’s market ascension, the ill-gotten gains are estimated to be worth over $4.5 billion, as of February.So far, federal officials have been careful not to implicate the couple in the actual hacking of the exchange, so it’s not entirely clear who is to blame for the intrusion into Bitfinex’s networks.
now charged stem from their attempts to launder the money out of that wallet and into their own accounts.Whoever the hacker was, they stole the crypto in a series of 2,000 unauthorized transactions, sending the 119,754 BTC to an outside wallet, dubbed in court documents “wallet 1CGa4s.
In court filings, federal investigators have revealed that they caught on to the couple’s ruse relatively early in the investigation. The criminal complaint reads: This shuffling, which created a voluminous number of transactions, appeared to be designed to conceal the path of the stolen BTC, making it difficult for law enforcement to trace the funds. Despite these efforts, as explained further below, U.S. authorities traced the stolen BTC to multiple accounts controlled by ILYA “DUTCH” LICHTENSTEIN, a Russian-U.S. national residing in New York, and his wife HEATHER MORGAN.
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