The United States announced today that it has recovered more than 94,000 bitcoins stolen in 2016 on the Bitfinex digital trading platform, valued at $ 3.6 billion today, a record amount for a foreclosure.
A couple suspected of trying to “launder” stolen bitcoins “in a cryptocurrency maze” were arrested this morning in New York, the Justice Department said in a press release.
They are Ilia Liechtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, who will appear before a federal judge later today.
“These arrests and this financial seizure, the most important one ever made by the ministry, show that cryptocurrencies are not a refuge for criminals,” Deputy Justice Minister Lisa Monaco said in a press release.
In August 2016, a hacker broke into the systems of the Bitfinex platform and made more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions, extracting almost 120,000 bitcoins, the value of which at that time was estimated at $ 65 million.
According to prosecutors, the digital coins were then found in a digital wallet controlled by Ilia Liechtenstein, who, on social media, is introduced as a “technology entrepreneur and investor”.
Over the next five years, 25,000 of these bitcoins were removed from this “wallet” through a “cryptocurrency trading maze” and used primarily to buy gold or NFT (non fungible tokens).
The rest, estimated at $ 3.6 billion, was recovered last week by U.S. investigators, who called on victims of the original theft to report it back to them for what they lost.
The investigation continues, the authorities point out, without giving more information about the perpetrator of the original piracy.
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