2016 Bitfinex Hack: Couple Charged over $4.5B in Stolen BTC Strikes Plea Deal

<p>American
rapper, Heather ‘Razzlekhan’ Morgan, and her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein, have
entered into a plea agreement with US prosecutors, according to a court
document seen by Reuters. The couple was <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/us-justice-dept-seizes-36bn-worth-bitcoin-from-2016-bitfinex-hack/" target="_blank" rel="follow">first arrested</a> in February 2022 for
allegedly laundering cryptocurrency worth $4.5 billion stolen via a hack of the
digital asset platform, Bitfinex, in 2016. </p><p>US Couple
Enters Plea Agreement</p><p>According
to Reuters, the pair will appear before Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelley in
Washington on August 3, 2023, for a plea hearing. In its
action last year, the Department
of Justice (DoJ) <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency" target="_blank" rel="follow">charged
the couple</a> with conspiracy
to commit money laundering and defraud the United States. </p><p>In August
2016, hackers <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/bitfinex-hackers-move-over-3-billion-of-the-stolen-bitcoins/" target="_blank" rel="follow">stole over 119,000
bitcoins</a> from
Bitfinex via thousands of unauthorized transactions. The stolen BTCs, which were priced at $71
million at the time, are worth about $3.5 billion at today’s BTC spot
market price.</p><p>Last year, the DoJ after the arrest of Morgan and Lichtenstein announced that it seized
about $3.6 billion in stolen digital assets directly linked to the hack.
However, prosecutors are now seeking to have the couple forfeit billions of
dollars in assets.</p><p>Bitfinex Continues Recovery Efforts</p><p>Meanwhile,
<a href="https://financemagnates.com" target="_blank" rel="follow">Finance Magnates</a> reported that Bitfinex has
continued to maintain efforts to get back some of the stolen
cryptocurrencies. Last month, the exchange <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/2016-crypto-hack-bitfinex-gets312k-in-latest-recovery-from-us/" target="_blank" rel="follow">received $315,000</a> in cash and cryptocurrencies
from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The
cryptocurrencies were seized by the US Customers and Border Protection, an
enforcement agency of the DHS.</p><p>Previously,
Bitfinex recovered little amounts of the stolen bitcoins. In 2021, the exchange <a href="https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/746" target="_blank" rel="follow">retrieved 6.5 BTC </a>worth $305,000 at the time through its partnership with another crypto trading platform, Poloniex. Similarly, Bitfinex in
February 2019 <a href="https://medium.com/bitfinex/bitcoins-returned-to-bitfinex-by-u-s-government-51fe84e8bb12" target="_blank" rel="follow">reclaimed 28 BTC</a> worth over $107,000 from the US
government.</p><p>Meanwhile,
a recent report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
(OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists, <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/2016-crypto-hack-bitfinex-hid-a-report-that-flagged-security-flaws-occrp/" target="_blank" rel="follow">claimed that</a> Bitfinex never made public a
confidential report that found its security lapses responsible for the 2016
hack. Reacting, dismissed the claims, calling them “factually incorrect.”</p>

This article was written by Solomon Oladipupo at www.financemagnates.com.