Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who were accused of laundering billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex hack, have reached a plea deal with US authorities. According to records filed on July 21 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the couple is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 3 for an arrangement and hearing as part of the plea agreement with prosecutors. They have been charged with conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to defraud the United States, and their digital assets are expected to be forfeited in connection with the case.
The accusations stem from the hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in August 2016, during which approximately 119,754 bitcoins were stolen. Lichtenstein and Morgan are alleged to have laundered more than 94,643 BTC of the stolen funds the enough a series of small complex transactions across multiple accounts and platforms. In February 2022, authorities arrested two people in New York and confiscated the laundered BTC, which was worth about $54 million at the time of the hack but had appreciated to $3.6 billion at the time of publication.
The DOJ's seizure of the laundered bitcoins marked the largest financial seizure related to the Bitfinex hack. While individuals involved in the hack often transfer small amounts of BTC, authorities typically only return a small portion of the funds to Bitfinex to help recover victims' losses.
