Book photos for Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein.
Courtesy of the Alexandria Adult Detention Center.
A man who hacked Bitfinex in 2016 and stole nearly 120,000 bitcoins from the cryptocurrency exchange was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for a money laundering scheme he and his wife carried out to hide the stolen cryptocurrency. imprisonment.
At the time of the Bitfinex cyber attack, the Bitcoin value at the time of the theft was only $70 million. Ilya Lichtenstein.
Thanks to the rise in Bitcoin prices since 2016, the cryptocurrency is currently worth $10.5 billion.
Lichtenstein, 35, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, pleaded guilty in August 2023, about 18 months after their arrest, to conspiracy to commit money laundering in federal court in Washington, D.C.
It was during that plea hearing that Lichtenstein publicly admitted for the first time that he was a Bitfinex hacker.
Lichtenstein could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
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