Reserving photographs for Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein.
Courtesy: Alexandria Grownup Detention Heart.
A person whose 2016 hack of Bitfinex drained practically 120,000 bitcoin from that cryptocurrency trade was sentenced Thursday to 5 years in prison for a money laundering scheme he and his wife employed to cover the swiped crypto.
The worth of that bitcoin stolen by Ilya Lichtenstein was simply $70 million when he executed the cyberattack on Bitfinex and initiated greater than 2,000 unauthorized transactions to siphon off the cryptocurrency.
That crypto is at the moment price $10.5 billion as a result of bitcoin’s rise in worth since 2016.
“I wish to take full accountability for my actions and make amends any method I can,” Lichtenstein reportedly advised Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in U.S. District Courtroom in Washington, D.C., earlier than she sentenced him to the prison time period and three years of supervised launch that prosecutors had requested.
Lichtenstein, 35, and his spouse, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, pleaded responsible to money laundering conspiracy in August 2023, 18 months after their arrest in New York Metropolis, the place they lived.
Lichtenstein first publicly admitted that he had been the hacker of Bitfinex at that plea listening to.
He had confronted a most potential sentence of 20 years in prison earlier than his sentencing on Thursday.
“The defendant perpetrated what was on the time one of many largest thefts from a digital forex trade,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “He grew to become one of many best money launderers that the federal government has encountered within the cryptocurrency house.”
“Over half a decade, the defendant engaged in what IRS brokers described as probably the most difficult money laundering methods they’d seen so far,” prosecutors wrote.
Lichtenstein will get credit score for the 29 months he has served in custody since his arrest. And with credit score for good conduct, which is customary within the federal penal system, Lichtenstein could possibly be launched from prison in lower than two years.
Morgan is scheduled to be sentenced Monday in Washington.
Prosecutors, who’ve stated she was a “lower-level participant” within the money-laundering scheme, which she solely grew to become concerned in three years after the Bitfinex hack, are asking the decide to sentence Morgan to 18 months in prison.
On the time of the couple’s arrest in February 2022, the Division of Justice stated officers had been capable of seize greater than 94,000 bitcoin stolen within the hack. That crypto, which was price greater than $3.6 billion on the time of the arrest, is now price practically $8.3 billion.
Prosecutors of their sentencing memo for Lichtenstein wrote that the federal “authorities anticipates returning most if not all of these property to Bitfinex and/or different potential homeowners by restitution” and different means.
