Sensational seizure of 3.6 billion bitcoins from the wallet used by the crackers who had stolen them from Bitfinex with 2000 scam transactions.
All the practices put in place to hide the money were not enough and even in this case the mantra "follow the money" in the end paid off. The case of the Bitfinex crack, from which cryptocurrencies for a billionaire were stolen in 2016, in fact comes to a sudden turning point with the arrest of two perpetrators and the seizure of Bitcoin for a value of 3.6 billion dollars. Loot seized Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31: both New York residents, both involved in this unparalleled scam. They are now charged with the accusation of having stolen 119,754 bitcoins through 2,000 fraudulent transactions. 25,000 bitcoins have over time been transferred to other wallets which have been linked to the two accused; the remainder (about 94 thousand bitcoins) never left the initial wallet, used as the main repository for the theft. However, every move was traced and, with precise reconstruction work, the paths traveled by bitcoins to reach the couple were highlighted. "Today's arrests and the department's largest-ever kidnapping show that cryptocurrencies are not a safe haven for criminals," explains Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco: "in a futile effort to keep the digital anonymity, defendants laundered stolen funds through a maze of transactions. Thanks to the precise work of the police, the department has once again demonstrated how money can be followed regardless of the form it takes ". Fictitious identities, automated transactions by bots and much more was set up by the couple to be able to recover the cryptocurrencies and thus monetize their value, but it was not enough: the Department of Justice and the FBI followed the movements step by step and reconstructed every single transaction up to go back to the couple. Which goes from a billionaire loot to a future in handcuffs.
ARRESTS ARTICLE The US arrest two suspects of the Bitfinex Bitcoin Hack