Booking photographs for Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein.
Courtesy: Alexandria Adult Detention Center.
A New York man on Thursday admitted to being the unique hacker of bitcoin within the 2016 cyberattack on Bitfinex, a theft that ended up being value $4.5 billion.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein made that bombshell admission whereas pleading responsible to laundering the stolen bitcoin in Washington, D.C., federal courtroom.
The plea got here earlier than his spouse, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, who was within the viewers, stepped as much as enter her personal responsible plea listening to within the case.
Until Thursday’s admission in courtroom by Lichtenstein, it was not publicly identified who had hacked the bitcoin from the cryptocurrency change Bitfinex.
The couple had not been charged within the hack itself.
Courtroom sketch of Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein whereas pleading responsible to laundering the stolen bitcoin in Washington, D.C., federal courtroom.
Artist: William Hennessey
When they have been arrested in February 2022, the Department of Justice stated officers had seized greater than 94,000 bitcoin of the greater than 119,000 hacked bitcoin. The seized bitcoin was value about $3.6 billion, making it the most important seizure in DOJ historical past.
When the bitcoin was stolen, it was value simply $70 million.
But its worth soared over time to $4.5 billion, as about “25,000 of those stolen bitcoin were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet via a complicated money laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan,” the DOJ stated after they have been arrested.
Lichtenstein, who’s a Russian emigre, has been held with out bond since his arrest after a decide dominated he’s a flight threat.
He will stay jailed till his sentencing on a rely of conspiracy to commit cash laundering, and has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.
Morgan, an aspiring rapper often called “Razzlekahn” and “The Crocodile of Wall Street,” was in courtroom for her husband’s plea listening to. She has been free on $3 million bond since her arrest.
Lichtenstein smiled at her and blew her a kiss throughout their second of eye contact, the primary time that they had seen one another in additional than a yr.
Courtroom sketch of Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein whereas pleading responsible to laundering the stolen bitcoin in Washington, D.C., federal courtroom.
Artist: William Hennessey
During Lichtenstein’s plea listening to, it was revealed that he had transformed some belongings to gold cash, and that Morgan had buried gold cash at a location now identified to legislation enforcement officers.
And it additionally was revealed that Lichtenstein’s previous journey to Ukraine and Kazakhstan was accomplished to transform digital belongings to money by Russian and Ukrainian middlemen. That money was then shipped to addresses in Russia and Ukraine, the place Lichtenstein decide it up bodily and deposited it into U.S. accounts so he may retrieve it whereas in New York City.
The Crypto Couple’s separate plea hearings have been moved up from their initially scheduled occasions Thursday attributable to arraignment later within the afternoon in the identical courthouse of Donald Trump. The former president was charged Thursday in that case with crimes associated to an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss.
A charging doc filed final month in opposition to the couple says that in early 2107 Lichtenstein “began to move a portion of the bitcoin” stolen within the hack “in a series of small, complex transactions across multiple accounts and platforms.”
This shuffling, which created a voluminous variety of transactions, was designed to hide the trail of the stolen funds,” according to that filing by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Prosecutors wrote that in February 2018, Lichtenstein and Morgan established an account at a U.S. financial institution for their company, Endpass, “and in doing so, represented to [that institution] that the first funds into the account could be from software-as-a-service buyer funds.”
“In actuality, Lichtenstein and Morgan used the account to launder proceeds of the hack of” Bitfinex, the submitting costs.
On the heels of their arrests final yr, Netflix stated it had commissioned a collection on the couple.
– Eamon Javers reported from Washington, D.C. Dan Mangan reported from Natick, Mass.
This is breaking news. Please examine again for updates.
Source: www.cnbc.com