U.S Department of Justice Recovers Stolen BTC from 2016 Bitfinex Hack

e_abrams

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Dec 11, 2020
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In 2016 Bitfinex, a famous cryptocurrency exchange was hacked and lost billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. This Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice revealed that it has recuperated $3.6 billion worth in BTC of the stolen funds.

Prosecutors managed to trace around 120,000 Bitcoins through pedantic procedures that scoured intricate web of transactions that were woven in order to hide the origin of the funds.

Authorities had arrested two individuals- a husband and a wife- for being involved in the hack. Ilya Lichtenstein 34, and Heather Morgan 31, are the prime suspects in the case. They were arrested earlier in Manhattan, and have already appeared in court in the same day as their arrest. Currently, they are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and to defraud the United States government.

An estimated 25,000 Bitcoins were slowly laundered over the years into gold, fiat currencies, and NFTs, as well as gift cards for the exchange of normal consumer items.

In 2016 hackers breached the system of Bitfinex and stole 119,755 Bitcoin, teaching the exchange a lesson it won’t soon forget. In mid-2020, the firm announced an award initiative to whoever helped out with the recovery process. Any individual that puts the exchange in contact with hackers would get a total of 5% of the entire recovered sum.
Source
Who could have imagined that after all this time at least some of the money would be found. I really doubt these two were the only ones involved in the crime. Let's see whether they will talk about their accomplices.