The Bitfinex hacker is sentenced to five years in prison for a multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency theft.
The stolen funds currently have a value of over 10 billion dollars.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, who was responsible for a significant cryptocurrency heist, has been sentenced to five years in prison for collaborating with his wife in laundering billions of dollars in stolen Bitcoin. The sentence was handed down on Thursday in a federal court in Washington, after he pleaded guilty to hacking the cryptocurrency platform Bitfinex in 2016, which allowed him to steal nearly 120,000 Bitcoin tokens.
Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan were arrested in 2022, and in the previous August, both pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit money laundering. At the time of the theft, the value of the stolen cryptocurrency was approximately $71 million, but this figure skyrocketed to around $4.5 billion at the time of their arrest. Today, the stolen amount could exceed $10 billion, given current prices.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Lichtenstein and Morgan used various advanced money laundering techniques to conceal the stolen funds. These tactics included using fictitious identities, converting Bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies, purchasing gold, and making deposits and withdrawals in various dark markets and cryptocurrency exchanges.
Lichtenstein's five-year sentence is notably shorter than the maximum penalty of 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering. For her part, Morgan, known online as “Razzlekhan,” is scheduled to be sentenced on November 18 and is expected to receive an 18-month prison sentence for her involvement in the crime.
