© Reuters
By Alessandro Albano
Investing.com – This is the largest foreclosure ever in the United States. The Department of Justice has recovered $3.6 billion worth of bitcoins by arresting a New York couple linked to laundering stolen digital coins in the Bitfinex exchange hack in 2016.
Six years ago, 119,756 bitcoins were stolen from the Hong Kong-based exchange. Their value at the time was $71 million, but it is equivalent to $4.5 billion according to the current price of the digital currency.
The US Department was able to recover much of what was stolen in 2016 thanks to the arrest of a couple, Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and Heather Morgan, 31, who allegedly conspired with the attackers web to launder fraudulent bitcoins.
According to the FBI investigation, Lichtenstein and Morgan made 2,000 unauthorized transactions to send Bitfinex virtual coins to a digital wallet under Lichtenstein’s control. Over the past five years, 25,000 bitcoins have been transferred from the offending wallet through a “complicated money laundering process”.
By tracking the transactions on the blockchain, investigators traced the origin of the movements and discovered that the money had then been deposited in different financial accounts in the name of the New York couple, who had in the meantime used the cash to buy consumer goods. The other funds, more than 94,000 bitcoins worth $3.6 billion, remained in the digital wallet used for “unauthorized” transactions.
The FBI, the Justice Department explained in a memo, was able to gain access to Lichtenstein-controlled online accounts where the digital keys needed to access the digital wallet where the bitcoins in question were stored were located.
“Today’s arrests,” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, “represent the largest financial seizure ever by the department, and demonstrate that cryptocurrencies are no safe haven for criminals.” . In a futile attempt to preserve anonymity, Monaco explained that “the defendants laundered the stolen funds through a maze of cryptocurrency transactions.”
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr, of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, added that the department “is able to track money through the blockchain and we will not allow cryptocurrencies to be a safe haven. for money laundering or a lawless zone within our financial system.”
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