Infamous Crypto Hacker Behind Nearly $11,000,000,000 Bitfinex Exploit Sentenced to Five Years in Prison

The notorious hacker behind the massive $10.934 billion exploit of crypto exchange Bitfinex is being sentenced to five years in prison.

According to a new press release by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Ilya Lichtenstein – who hacked Bitfinex in 2016 and fraudulently sent 119,754 Bitcoin (BTC) to a wallet under his control – has been sentenced to five years for his role in the scheme.

Court documents reveal that after the exploit, Lichtenstein took measures to cover his tracks, such as deleting key Bitfinex files that could have helped law enforcement identify him. Furthermore, he asked his wife to help him launder the stolen money.

Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, utilized sophisticated money-washing techniques – including depositing and withdrawing funds into and out of darknet and cryptocurrency exchange, converting the BTC to other forms of digital assets and using crypto mixing services – to obfuscate the funds, according to the DOJ.

Lichtenstein and his wife both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering on August 3rd, 2023. While Morgan is slated to be sentenced on November 18th, Liechtenstein will serve his term plus three years of supervised release.

Earlier this month, in her sentencing memo, Morgan said she was in “complete shock” when her husband told her about the hack four years after the fact. According to Morgan, she felt complicit and helped him cover up his tracks because she had accepted stolen crypto from him before.

“In 2020, I learned that my husband Ilya Lichtenstein committed a serious crime in 2016. When he told me what he had done, I was in complete shock. I made the poor decision to get involved in Ilya’s crime. Our relationship was far from perfect, but I deeply love and care about my husband, and the truth is, I did not want him to go to prison because we were planning to start a family together.”

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