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 money stolen from Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, with the help of his woman.
Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, hacked into Bitfinex’s network in 2016 using advanced hacking tools and techniques and stole approximately 120,000 bitcoin, the US Department of Justice 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 risen to more than $4.5 billion by the time of their arrest.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time that the $3.6 billion in assets prosecutors recovered from the couple was the largest 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 will be sentenced on November 18.
In addition to his prison sentence, Lichtenstein was ordered to serve three years of supervised release, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
