The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it had executed its largest financial seizure in history, recovering $3.6 billion in bitcoin BTCUSD, -1.43% stolen in a 2016 hack of the currency exchange Bitfinex.
A husband and wife with a background as tech entrepreneurs in blockchain technology were arrested for their alleged role in the theft.
Prosecutors said they had managed to trace the stolen money — nearly 120,000 bitcoins — through an intricate web of transactions done to hide its origins, to a number of crypto wallets controlled by Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his 31-year-old wife, Heather Morgan.
The pair were arrested Tuesday morning in Manhattan and were scheduled to appear in court later in the day on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and to defraud the U.S. government, authorities said. They have not been charged with perpetrating the hack itself.
The couple couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, and it wasn’t clear whether they had retained attorneys.
source marketwatch.com
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