The US Department of Justice recovered more than 94,000 bitcoins stolen in 2016. (file)
Washington:
The US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it recovered more than 94,000 bitcoins stolen in 2016, currently valued at $3.6 billion, a record seizure.
The department said a couple who tried to launder bitcoin were arrested in New York. Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, were to appear in federal court over the charges.
Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly sought to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoins – then valued at $65 million – that were stolen during the 2016 hack of the virtual currency exchange Bitfinex.
“Today’s arrest and the department’s largest financial seizure to date demonstrate that cryptocurrencies are not a safe haven for criminals,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the statement.
According to court documents, some of the stolen cryptocurrencies were sent to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein, who describes himself on social media as a “technology entrepreneur, coder and investor.”
About 25,000 of the stolen bitcoins were transferred from the wallet “through the maze of cryptocurrency transactions” over the next five years, and the money was used to buy items such as gold or digital NFTs (fungible tokens). .
The remaining bitcoin was recovered last week by US investigators, who called on the victims of the initial theft to come forward and recover their losses.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
,