Mastermind Behind Bitfinex Hack Gets 5-Year Sentence for Money Laundering

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Sujha Sundararajan

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November 15, 2024

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The hacker who stole and laundered billions in Bitcoin from Bitfinex exchange has been sentenced to five years in prison. Ilya Lichtenstein and his social media rapper wife pled guilty last year to laundering $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin at the time of recovery.

Per court documents, quoted by the U.S. Justice Department in a statement on Thursday, Lichtenstein hacked into Bitfinex’s network in 2016 using advanced hacking tools and techniques.

“Lichtenstein fraudulently authorised more than 2,000 transactions transferring 119,754 Bitcoin from Bitfinex to a cryptocurrency wallet in Lichtenstein’s control.”

Further, lawyers noted that Lichtenstein spent months attempting to gain access to Bitfinex’s infrastructure and get the permissions he needed.

From January 2017 through their arrest in February 2022, the couple tried to liquidate portions of the stolen funds.

In October, US prosecutors urged a judge to give Lichtenstein a longer sentence for his role in one of the largest crypto hacks. They recommended three years of supervised release.

“Lichtenstein was ordered to serve three years of supervised release. Morgan is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18.”

The Thursday ruling marks a significant conclusion to a seven-year investigation, which involved multiple US agencies. The IRS-Criminal Investigations unit, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and blockchain forensics firm TRM Labs, were involved in the investigation.

“Over half a decade, the defendant engaged in what IRS agents described as the most complicated money laundering techniques they had seen to date.”

Besides, Lichtenstein enlisted the help of his wife, Heather Morgan, in laundering the stolen funds. The couples employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques, including using fictitious identities to set up online accounts, the statement read.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said, “this is so massive, it is not comparable to other crypto crimes,” before sentencing.

Lichtenstein’s Previous Hacks

Though Ilya Lichtenstein did not have a criminal history before his arrest in connection with the Bitfinex hack, this wasn’t his first heist.

According to prosecutors, in 2015, he illegally transferred a small amount of PayCoin, experimenting with other hacking and financial fraud.

“Sometime prior to 2016, the defendant acquired credentials to another virtual currency exchange’s application programming interface (API) and stole approximately $200,000,” the prosecutors’ memo read.