- On August 3, another hearing was held in the Bitfinex hacking case.
- In the trial, 35-year-old Russian-born Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to hacking into the platform.
- His wife said she knew about the theft and helped her husband launder the funds. In total, they face up to 35 years in prison.
Ilya Lichtenstein admitted to organizing the hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in August 2016. His wife Heather Morgan was involved in laundering the stolen 120,000 BTC ($3.4 billion at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap).
The defendant stated this during a hearing on August 3, 2023. Morgan was in the courtroom. She pleaded guilty to two counts of the indictment following her husband.
The couple was arrested in February 2022. Morgan is out on bail while Lichtenstein remains in custody. During the trial, the girl even found a job.
In the hearing, the prosecutor said the attacker used multiple accounts and access to Birfinex’s internal network to hack into and steal about 120,000 BTC.
He withdrew the funds to a controlled wallet. The couple used it to buy NFTs, other cryptoassets, gold coins and even Wallmart certificates, according to prosecutors.
Lichtenstein now faces up to 20 years in prison, while his wife faces up to 10 years in prison. About 94,000 BTC in the case have been traced and seized, making the U.S. government one of the largest bitcoin holders in the world.
Significantly, shortly after Lichtenstein and Morgan’s arrest, streaming service Netflix announced that it intends to screen the story.