US man sentenced to 5 years over laundering crypto stolen from Bitfinex hack

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A New York technology entrepreneur was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty last year to laundering funds stolen from Bitfinex one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, with the help of his wife.

Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, hacked into Bitfinex’s network in 2016, using advanced hacking tools and techniques, and stole about 120,000 bitcoin, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

He and his wife Heather Morgan, who used the hip-hop alias “Razzklekhan” to promote her music, were arrested in February 2022.

The bitcoin was worth $71 million at the time of the theft, but had appreciated to more than $4.5 billion by the time of their arrests.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time that the $3.6 billion in assets that prosecutors recovered from the couple was the biggest financial seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Morgan had also pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Morgan is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18.

In addition to his term of imprisonment, Lichtenstein was ordered to serve three years of supervised release, the U.S. Justice Department said.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Sandra Maler)