The FBI arrested a Russian for stealing 120,000 Bitcoin and laundering billions of dollars - he faces up to 25 in prison

In 2016, the Bitfinex exchange was hacked. The attackers stole 120,000 BTC, and almost six years later they were detained by the FBI in New York.

What is known

The US Department of Justice said that the theft of cryptocurrency in August 2016 was organized by Russian Ilya Liechtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan. It was possible to calculate the criminals after they sent 25,000 Bitcoin coins to one of the accounts. Also during the search, they found a key to access the wallet, which stored more than 94,000 BTC.

In an attempt to launder funds, the couple carried out a number of crypto transactions. Over the past five years, they have managed to withdraw approximately 25,000 Bitcoins to their own addresses. Now it is $1.1 billion, but in fact the real amount is much more modest due to the low exchange rate until 2021. According to the FBI, the detainees had about two thousand cryptocurrency wallets, and they wrote down seed phrases to access them in a table that was stored in the cloud.

Now Liechtenstein and Morgan face up to 25 years in prison. The detainees, despite the huge resonance, were released on bail - $ 5 million and $ 3 million, respectively. Although the court initially demanded $100 million, lawyers called the amount ridiculous.

Recall that 120,000 BTC stolen from the Bitfinex crypto exchange was estimated at $71 million in 2016. Now the value is almost $5.3 billion. The seized 94,000 Bitcoin coins are estimated at about $4.15 billion. After the theft Bitfinex suspended operations, but eventually resumed operations. In 2019, the FBI managed to return about 27,000 BTC to the project.

A source: The U.S. Department of Justice