The Justice Department Seizes $3.6 Billion in Cryptocurrency
The Justice Department announced Tuesday its largest-ever financial seizure — more than $3.6 billion — and the arrests of a New York couple accused of conspiring to launder billions of dollars in cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of a virtual currency exchange.
Federal law enforcement officials said the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, a 34-year-old citizen of Russia and the United States, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, accused of relying on various sophisticated techniques to launder the stolen cryptocurrency and to conceal the transactions. They face federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
